I Love FedEx's Tracking System!

Our Dossier is in Dubai. I hope it's sunnier there than here!

The Smile of a Future Dad

You can tell the future dad is excited...

When he received the polite, official sounding email from Alberta Adoption Services, he decided to forward it to me with only a smiley face for a message.

But instead of hitting foward, he hit reply. And he sent a smiley face to the lady at the government... I think he’s getting a little too casual... :-D

He had to send her another email to thank her, apologize for the smiley face and explain that it was destined to me.

Her reply? A smiley face!

I guess it could have been worse.

Oh and by the way, our Dossier is in Memphis, Tennessee, right now. 

Almost There

We got an email from a lady at the Alberta Adoption Services today: OUR DOSSIER IS ON ITS WAY!!!!

It was sent this afternoon to Sri Lanka via Fedex. And you know what the cool part is? We have a tracking number! So we'll know when it has been received and signed for in Colombo...

I am away from home for work right now. I can't wait to go home to celebrate yet another step with the future papa! He's the one who called me, all excited, to give me the news :-)

Okra Sambol

Okra Salad

Okra is not a regular in our kitchen... I know it's used quite a bit in southern US, but it's not even readily available in grocery stores where Pablo and I live.
So this okra sambol was pretty exotic for us!
This time, I got the recipe from a different web site:
http://www.infolanka.com/recipes/mess3/172.html

It was good, though the okra makes the salad a bit gooey...

We had it for supper tonight, with a fish curry and rice. Sri Lankan cuisine has definitely entered our regular menu, or at least its curries! We still have so much more to discover!

Baby Steps

Since yesterday, our file has the Ontario seal and Sri Lankan consulate approval on it :-)
That's one more step out of the way.

Our paperwork will be sent to the Alberta government by FedEx today.

From the Doorstep of a VIP Club

One unexpected effect of going to that kids items sale on Saturday was that I was for once allowed to behave like a future mom.
Each family had rented a table to display all the stuff they wanted gone, a bit like at a multi-family garage sale. While I was shopping for used clothes, I talked a bit with the parents (mostly ladies) who were selling.
Here's an example of a typical conversation:
Seller: Are you looking for boy or girl clothes?
Me: I don't know yet, we're expecting :-)
Seller: Oh! Congratulations!
Me (all smiles): Thank you!
If people asked more (because I don't exactly look pregnant), I would say we are adopting and get all sorts of curious (but never inappropriate) questions.

I know, this sounds terribly ordinary.

It' not.

Not if you have waited years to become a parent.
Not if all parents in the world seemed to be members of a huge private club in which you were persona non grata just a few months ago.
Not if you've ever seriously doubted you'd ever get to be in that position.

In all reality, we're not quite expecting yet. Our file is still in Canada. But we are so close, and I think I'll have the most beautiful pregnancy!

More Stuff for our Collection

I have been bargain hunting for a while now. I keep an eye on Craigslist and Kijiji. It doesn't always work out, though. A few weeks ago, I had found a really inexpensive crib. I phoned and asked for it to be kept aside until later that same week, when I would have time to go pick it up. When I called back the night before I was going to pick it up, the guy had sold it to someone else... Oh well!

This weekend, however, I had two good finds.

I found an umbrella stroller for $5.

 

 And a set of 8 glass bottles with different size teats for $25.

This weekend, there was also a sale for used baby and children items. I was hoping to find used furnitures. A crib and changing table maybe. But it was mainly clothes and toys. Still, I found a few good items for the space behind our washing machine (did I tell you that's where we're storing our baby stuff while we wait?).

For a total of $75, I got:

• 2 sets of crib sheets
• 2 receiving blankets
• 2 washable diapers (different designs, to try them out)
• 2 bibs
• 5 onesies
• 5 pajamas
• 1 pair cotton pants
• 1 pair jeans
• 1 short
• 1 sun hat
• 5 little cardboard books
• 1 bath book
• 1 grown-up book on baby development during the first year (it even talks about adoptive parenting!)
• 1 sippy cup
• 4 baby spoons

The clothes are all sized between 6 months and 18 months. It turned out to be really difficult to find gender neutral clothes for 6-18 months old! There's a lot of gender neutral stuff for newborns, but it seems like as soon as parents know they have a boy or a girl, it's all blue tractors and pink butterflies! As soon as I saw something yellow, green or white, I'd get it :D

 

I've made a little back-of-the-envelope calculation and we would probably have paid right around $350 for all this, brand new. It cost us a total of $105 used... It's definitely worth the trouble of buying used stuff, especially since we have nothing but time in this process!