Peter on the Piano

These videos are from Peter playing the piano at his school's spring concert:

Happy Birthday, Thomas!

Can you believe this little guy is five years old already?  Happy birthday to our sweet, crazy, hilarious, curious, and incredibly loud Tommy G!  We love you!

Finally...lost teeth!

Pete has finally lost his first teeth!  Not the old fashioned way, but by getting them pulled at the dentist.  He just finished second grade, so he has been way behind his friends in this area (and might have been a little jealous!).  I was checking for loose teeth a couple weeks ago, and I noticed that he had an adult tooth coming in behind his baby teeth.  So we went off to the dentist who informed us that the roots of his bottom two front teeth were not dissolving like they should, so he would have to pull them out.  I was creeped out watching the whole thing, but Pete was a champ! 

Here's the before picture from last night:

And from this afternoon:

So we have a big day tomorrow...the tooth fairy comes to our house for the first time, and it is Thomas's birthday!

Adoption Update - What's Next?

Our I-800A application to adopt was recently approved by the United States government.  This is a huge step in the process, and it was completed much faster than we anticipated!  Now the most common question we receive is, "So, what's next?"

Well, some of the next steps are clear, and some are not.  The easy answer is that we are preparing our dossier to be sent to China.  Our dossier is a group of documents, including our home study, that we send to China so they can approve us to adopt and log us into their system.  Preparing the dossier involves some authentication and translation, so we anticipate that it will be ready to send in a couple of weeks.  About 3-4 weeks after that, we should receive confirmation of our log-in date.

The more complicated part is the process of matching with our child.  After our log-in date, we could wait to receive a referral from China.  The estimated wait for a referral is three months.  However, there are also lists of waiting children, and we could decide to select a child from those lists and match any day now, even before our log-in date.  So which way are we going to match?  We have no idea!!  The thought of just choosing a child from lists of children is daunting.  Is there something magical that happens and you know a listing is your child?  How do you choose just one when you have a list in front of you that represents so many needs?  In that way, it seems like waiting for a referral would be easier.  On the other hand, selecting a child would give us more control over the specific age and special needs of the child.  It is just a matter of deciding if we actually want that much control!

Which leads to the next inevitable questions: How old will the child be?  Boy or girl?  What kind of special needs are you considering?  We will almost certainly adopt a girl.  Our home study says ages 0-3 years, but that could potentially extend slightly older, with the most likely estimate being 2-3 years old.  As for special needs, we are most seriously considering adopting a child with down syndrome.  Of course none of this is set in stone until we commit to a referral, but those are our best guesses right now.

And what is a blog post without pictures?  Here are a few from last weekend.  Pete had a choir concert and Grandma and Grandpa came to visit!

With Grandpa before the concert

Ruthie wants in on the pictures too

Baking an early birthday cake for Thomas

Bring on the cake!