Getting Ready for Baby

I spent last weekend converting our spare room back into a nursery. Over the four year wait, it had evolved into a closet for Tony, office for me, storage room for cleaning supplies and somewhere to stash whatever we couldn't find a home for. So four days before the social worker comes to make the home visit, I'm on a mission to clean up this dust bunny of a room so it becomes inhabitable for our new small person.

Speaking of the new inhabitant, we have received quite a lot of positive information about Grace that has boosted our enthusiasm for this new adventure...as if it needed any more boosting. When we received Lil's health and development report it was basically a checklist that said something like, sleeps well, laughs at all our jokes, eats anything we feed her and is the smartest kid in the orphanage. But when we got together with our travel group, everybody had basically the same checklist...and as it turns out Lil didn't sleep, eat or laugh.

I had a best case scenario hope list for this adoption: Grace was going to be around two, female, from a Mandarin speaking area, from a Half-the-Sky orphanage and potty trained. Air Canada was going to have a seat sale on business class travel to Beijing and the Canadian Dollar was going to be on a tear to help us pay for all of this. It would seem that the planets have aligned.

Being Mandarin was important because my lovely man has been studying the language for 6 years and it would be nice if he had someone to talk to.

Half the sky is an American foundation that offers developmental enrichments programs to specific orphanages and Grace actually has her own caregiver. This means she will be ready for med school at 12.

I don't know about the potty training, but given the kind of luck we're having, I'm living on the edge and buying pull-ups and 649 tickets.

Grace has Tony's ears and his calm personality. This is a huge relief, because Lil is quite a lot like me and we really wear ourselves out.

Air Canada finally had a seat sale on executive class seats to Beijing. This is important because we're old and I am not wearing support hose on a 12 hour flight. Besides, I understand that they serve free anticoagulants in business class as well.

But, and this is the icing on the cake, Grace comes from a city (Nanning) that prides itself on its fabulous gardens, which she apparently loves playing in. Finally, someone to help me with the compost!

Now we know why it took 4 years.