Nesting.....

OKay, so the next step should have taken place on Tuesday.  According to the delivery confirmation or my paperwork in China, my paperwork should have been hand-delivered to the US Embassy in China on Tuesday, August 9th and scheduled for a Tuesday, August 23 pick-up.  I have been waiting patiently for two days to get confirmation that it actually happened but have not yet received any sort of assurance that it has been handled.  I'm getting frustrated. 

I'm holding out hope that things are going to get back on track for end-of-September travel.  There is another wonderful family in our city that has a little boy waiting for them in another province in China that is on the exact same timeline that we are.  I'm hoping that our families can travel together.  How fun would that be?!

This week we spent time getting Elliott's room ready.  Now that we are just a month and a half away (we hope) from finally going to get him, I am finally allowing myself to start 'nesting'.  Matt and I painted it, and we let the girls decide where all of the little animal characters went.  As a gift, a dear friend of ours had Elliott's Chinese characters hand-painted in gold paint on special paper by an Asian artist, and we framed it and hung it on the wall over his bed.  Matt, the uber-creative handyman, made a custom nightlight out of a globe and hung it from the ceiling near his bed.  His closet is overflowing with new clothes.  It's so exciting to see it all come together, but at the same it was so hard for me to paint over the purple paint in the girls' old nursery room.  Just six years ago, I was painting it with lilac and purple and daydreaming about children during first pregnancy.  Painting over that was like closing a door on some of the happiest years of my life so far.  But then when I stand back and see this, with so much of it gifted to us from good friends who have supported us throughout our adoption journey and continue to cheer us on, I feel so grateful and excited....

And as you can see here, the girls already stacked Elliott's puzzles and set up his train table for him....

And here's the globe light that his Daddy made for him ('cause we're traveling from one end to the other to get him and bring him HOME!)

Love this beautiful painting!  (Thank you, Candi & Casey!)

Look at all these clothes!  (Thank you Becky and Cathy!)

 I know the quilt on the bed is a little feminine, but we're keeping the room set up to be a guest room for a little while, until he's ready to move into it from the toddler bed in our bedroom (we want him close to us at first). We're planning on finding some unique treasures while we are in China to hang in his room, but this is a very good start. A very good start, indeed!