Dossier!

This past Friday Tim, Cale and I went to Grand Rapids to kidnap my mom. Okay, well, we also went to see my nieces (and sister and brother-in-law), but then we came back to Chicago with my mom. She has been visiting them for her Christmas vacation so we thought we'd have her come and check out the new house while she was "in the area." In the area meaning not the insane distance that she normally is from us! (Pennsylvania) Anyway, we came back really late Saturday night, so we didn't check our mail until today and guess what was there? Our Dossier! Wow!! I was totally pumped. I opened it up and showed it to Cale saying "this is gonna be your new brother or sister!" While that may be confusing for a child, my 21-month-old gave me the appropriate enthusiastic smile I was looking for! :) It's very exciting because I wasn't expecting it so soon! I've already read almost everything in it. For someone who is task-oriented, it's actually kinda fun to have the list of things to do and to WANT to put it together as fast as you can. So I'm hoping that by the end of January we will not only have the Dossier completed, but sent to Ethiopia with the Nesters officially on the waiting list! WAHOO!!

2nd Homestudy Visit

Today after work, Tim and I drove in the 3 degree weather to Arby's in Dwight, IL to meet with our home study caseworker. It turns out our home study agency itself is 3 hours away, but our caseworker graciously agreed to meet us 1/2 way. I think she took pity on us because of Cale. He is sick, poor thing. His nose, and now chin are completely red and raw because of the excessive amounts of snot running down it. Plus, he's got horrendous diaper rash! A recipe for disaster with a 1 1/2 year old. At any rate, the meeting went well, and she told us we wouldn't have to meet again. We're just waiting on physician letters for our physicals, and our police background check and we are all done with the home study. YES!! Next adventure: I600A, more fun to follow.

our information packet

We got our 'Information about Ethiopia' packet today, the "green folder" for everyone associated with AAI. I thought it would have more info about the country by how it was described to me, but it's more about raising an adopted child. It is good advice, but a lot of it has to do with adopting an older child. And, it's not from a Christian perspective, so I disregard a lot of it. It had a letter in the forefront stating that we will receive our dossier in about two weeks! YEAH!! We're so so excited. Meanwhile, I've been buying things for our baby's room. Yes, before I know if it's a boy or girl, before we are officially on the waiting list. :) Tim and I decided that a "safari/jungle" theme would suit this baby's room well. The walls are already yellow, and I got a small giraffe bookshelf and a little lion rug. I would love to find either a safari animal-type border or even better, find someone who can make an awesome mural on our wall of animals! I really wish I were artistically inclined. :)

First Homestudy Visit

We had our first home study visit today! Okay, so it wasn't as crazy as I thought it would be. Our caseworker didn't really do the huge thorough investigation of our house that I was expecting. She did our biographies and had us sign a bunch of paperwork in less than an hour and a half (where I saw quotes of the first visit taking about 4 hours)! We have our second home study visit scheduled for next Monday. We're now one step closer to our baby! Exciting times!

to our baby

Dear Baby,
Your Aunt Elizabeth had her second daughter today. Your new cousin's name is Tessa Rose. She was born at 1:16 am, weighing in at 8 lbs 5 oz, and measuring 20 inches.
It's an exhilarating time, Baby...listening to the little descriptions about a new baby after birth - for this helps us to relate to this new little person.
But it really makes me think about you. We may not know the exact time you were (or will be) born or what you weighed in at (or will), but we do know that we love you and desperately can't wait to meet you. Don't be discouraged, Baby...because we will have different facts. We will have the exact time and date God showed us to you. And the reaction on your face when you saw us for the first time. And we will have proof of where we were in our life when we got you (because we are definitely going to keep copies of all that paperwork! :)
God made you special, Baby, and we will cherish the facts we get!

Blog Name

While I think the blog name "Chasing Jace" is pretty awesome :) it doesn't really relate to the EXACT situation we are in. See, Jace is what we would name our son (if we got referred a boy), however, we haven't really been able to nail down a girl's name. ((which means we are either destined to have all boys, or we need some serious advice on good girl name))
But, back to Chasing Jace. While it would be a great blog name if we knew we were getting a boy, Tim thinks we should change it until we know for sure. So, any suggestions? We want it to be unique. I've seen a lot of different blog names I like, but I don't want to copy!

A few facts about the Amharic language.

Amharic Alphabet

Amharic is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the "official working" language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
Amharic is written with a version of the Ge'ez script known as Fidel. There is no standard way to transliterate Amharic into the Latin alphabet.

Vowels

The Amharic language uses seven vowels:

Vowel	Sounds like
ä	again
u	moon
i	feet
a	father
e	way
ï	pin
o	war

Script

The Ethiopian script is not strictly speaking an alphabet, but what is called a syllabary. This means that each letter or symbol usually represents a whole syllable.

There are thirty three basic shapes. These generally represent the consonants followed by the vowel ä. The basic shapes are altered in various ways to indicate a different vowel following the base consonant.

The Amharic syllabary is usually presented as a grid with the vowels in the horizontal axis and the consonants in the vertical axis. Below is the syllabary in the most common ha-hu order:

Getting Started.

This is my first posting about our adoption from Ethiopia, and it's hard to describe how excited I am to get everything going. A lot of thanks to Rachael Oren for walking me through so much already!! Tim and I have been married for 4 years and have one beautiful son, Cale. He will be 2 in April. Financing our adoption is going to be entirely dependent on the Lord, but we KNOW this is what he wants us to do right now but we would appreciate prayers as we work toward each payment. I wish I could just fast-forward the next few months until we meet our new baby. For those of you who don't know, we have requested an infant of either gender, so it'll be a surprise for us! I'm hoping this blog will keep everyone updated on our adventure and feel like they can really relate to and be a part of our adoption!