Mommy, We Are One Step Closer

One step closer. One step closer to completing our family. One step closer to being together.

We are one step closer to Lion.

Last week several families in our agency received court dates. Some of them had the same paperwork dates as us. I knew we were next. I could feel it. So I did what any "sane" and "rational" person would do, I stalked my e-mail.

The first few days, I was refreshing my e-mail every 5 or 10 minutes between the hours of 10 and 7. I just had to know if we'd gotten a court date. I was making myself crazy. I carried my phone in my hand. My beloved I-phone which I once viewed as a life line, a way to reach out to my friends, was now the enemy. I had instant access to my e-mail and I wanted an answer instantly.

I had to take a step back. I told myself I could only check every half hour. That was saner, more rational. I had to actually live the life I had instead of putting it on hold for the one I wanted. Still there was no word. Then the weekend came, two whole days with no possibility of news. How would I survive?

Lucky for me, this week was much busier with school, dentist appointments and the like. There was less time to obsess, there were more distractions. Sometimes I would forget to check my e-mail for a whole hour. Two days passed and no news.

Yesterday, I ran to the store, picked Bunny up from preschool and then made lunch. I hadn't checked my e-mail in over two hours when I sat down to eat. As I waded through the junk in my inbox, I resigned myself that there would be no news.

But there it was, an e-mail from our agency saying we have a court date scheduled for February 12th. Holy moley that is next Friday. I let out an excited yell and explained what happened to Bunny.

She looked at me with a solemn face and said "Mommy, we are one step closer to Lion".
Yes, sweetie we are one step closer to bringing him home.
Then she said "Good, I want him home. Can I have fruit snacks after lunch? Lion can't eat fruit snacks, he's just a baby."

So what does this all mean in the grand scheme of things?

A court date is held in the Ethiopian court and our representative in Ethiopia appears on our behalf. Assuming the court hears our case and everything is in order, we will pass and Lion will be legally our son. The adoption will be finalized in Ethiopia.

We will then wait for the US Embassy in Addis to issue a date for a Visa interview. Our agency generally has two dates a month, one around the 9th or 10th and one around the 23rd or 24th. The Visa date is very important. Our travel is built around that date. We will go a few days earlier to get our precious little Lion. We will travel to his home province and meet his birth father. And finally after the Visa has been issued, we can bring him home.

Assuming things continue as they have in the past we could travel in the first group in March. Most likely it will be the second.

I've always heard March can come in or go out like a Lion and now it will for us.