The final weeks of waiting...

... have not gotten any easier. We're busy cleaning up from three weeks of music camp, organizing next year's homeschool, and making travel arrangements. Busy is a close proximation of comfort at this point.

I wonder how her foster family feels just now, and whether they have grown to dread the day they have to leave her at the Child Welfare Institute. We won't meet them; the hand-off is performed by orphanage workers. Maybe the fosters are experienced, and have the right metric of loving care + personal preservation intact so they're able to help children make this transition again and again. I hope the bittersweet knowledge that she will have a family is a comfort to them.

There are so many things I don't want to miss for her. What if we forget to ask something that could become important to her when she's older? I've been trying to research and find out what the parents who have done this and who have grown children now would do if they were new like us. You can ask for information about the leaving spot, the note (if any), pictures of the child on that day. People don't always get them and they don't always get even enough to find a family later. It would be such a shame to miss out on information she will want because we simply didn't think to ask. I trust our agency (Holt) but still, the responsibility for so much of this lies with us.

We're going to try to post a laminated picture that announces to her city (of 10.2 million) that she will be okay. That her surgery was a success and she'll have a family who can care for her, and that someday we will come back to visit all together. Her beginning will always be a part of her, and while I never understood this when I read other adoptive parents' words, I believe I already love all of her. It might be harder later as a mom and a human being, but right now I hope she does want to embrace China and find the beauty in its relationship with her.

Our plane tickets are purchased, our first few nights in Hong Kong reserved. Now to prepare the boys' school work and little gifts to open at Gramma's while we're gone... just 17 days left.

My expression when I learned there is more paperwork to be done in China! (and that there are at least two Starbucks within walking distance of our hotel in every city we'll visit...)