Here We Come, Baby N!

In nine days we'll have our first family photo!!!

Well, kind of. We still have to pass court on 7/14 to officially be considered a "family" on paper but nonetheless, all three of us will be in the same room next Tuesday, 7/13 and we will be snapping away. The following day we'll appear in court, hopefully pass and then be issued our embassy date. That's the date we'll return to Ethiopia (early/mid August) to bring our son home.

Since passing our first court date (6/30), it seems things have been moving at warp speed with things to prepare, lists to check off and of course the holiday weekend. One thing I'm experiencing though that I wanted to pass on to waiting families is the sense of completeness you will feel. I can't help but contribute the agony of waiting for this day to happen and knowing you're done with it that makes it that much more complete. The ups & downs of this roller coaster over the past 1+ years gains so much momentum as you near court date that it does quite a job on one's sanity at times.

One thing that hit me when our caseworker called was, I can take the tags off now!

We have a nursery packed full of goodies; all with their store tags firmly in place. In the back of my mind, I couldn't go to the level of permanancy that requires one to remove the tags before putting the clothes away. What if something happened? Would I be jinxing something? How could we ever handle this if something fell through for some bizarre reason in the final hour? Well, I'm over that now and with scissors in hand...there will not be one tag remaining in Baby N's nursery when I'm done! It's happening and all the weight we've carried around for the past months, that only got heavier toward the end, is gone.

If you're waiting, just know that there is an end in sight and all the crazies will soon make sense! If you're a reader of this blog and not an adopting parent, you may have no idea what I'm referring to. If you're an AP, I'm sure you get it. We're all crazies together on some level :)

So...

Our bags are packed - three in total:
Bags One & Two: humanitarian aide
Bag Three: our clothes, care packages (which we'll drop with waiting families' children) and a small package for Baby N

Word of advice on air travel:
Read the fine print and follow up if any leg of your flight involves EgyptAir as a codeshare partner. A long story (one that has taken many hours of my time over the past FOUR days) but I'll make it short...
EgyptAir does not have to honor their portion of your booking, in either price or actual ticketing. In addition, this messaging is quite cryptic, even for a fairly well-traveled customer to notice.
This isn't to dissuade anyone from using the airline, but to help avoid the same thing from happening to someone else. We were less than seven days from travel and realized our flight that we booked in June, was missing the EgyptAir leg and was never ticketed on their end. Not fun. Thanks to an amazing and very professional supervisor at Continental, who has seen this before, we are all sorted and on our way via Continental and Ethiopian Airlines.

We're headed to Cairo on Thursday for an eventful weekend of exploring before heading to Addis on Monday where we will most certainly be on pins and needles in anticipation of meeting Baby N on Tuesday. I get all jittery just thinking about it!

In a few hours, we're headed to my brothers for some pool, heat and bbq'ing fun.
Happy July 4th all!