Friday, August 31, 2007

HANG ON LITTLE TOMATO
Lyrics and music: Patrick Abbey, China Forbes & Thomas M. Lauderdale
http://www.myspace.com/pinkmartinionmyspace

The sun has left and forgotten me
It’s dark, I cannot see
Why does this rain pour down?
I’m gonna drown
In a sea… of deep confusion
Somebody told me – I don’t know who
Whenever you are sad and blue
And you’re feelin’ all alone and left behind
Just take a look inside and you will find

You gotta hold on, hold on through the night
Hang on, things will be all right
Even when it’s dark
And not a bit of sparkling
Sing-song sunshine from above
Spreading rays of sunny love – just

Hang on, hang on to the vine
Stay on, soon you’ll be divine
If you start to cry, look up to the sky
Something’s coming up ahead
To turn your tears to dew instead

And so I hold on to this advice
When change is hard and not so nice
If you listen to your heart the whole night through
Your sunny someday will come one day soon to you


On August 13th, our Letter of Intent was sent for Miss Tomato.
Let me tell you what I know about her. Her birthday is in the middle of January, 2005. She's almost exactly a month younger than Laina. When we started into this second adoption, I thought for sure we would be bringing home another baby, but I'm so excited that we'll be getting a toddler/little girl. She likes pretty things, dolls, and hair ribbons. She likes to say hello to the neighbors and play cooking in the kitchen. She's a little spoiled.

She's been living for most of her life in foster care, with 2 older siblings and one younger sibling. She seems to be about the same size as Laina. I can't wait to meet her!!

Her special need is that she has a nevus on her chest. We'll have to monitor it for changes and see if it ever needs treatment. Right now, it looks like we just need to check it out and have it monitored. I don't really get why this is a special need, but I don't make the decisions regarding special needs kids.

I think about the kids that were on the list and that we considered submitting LOI for. I hope they are matched with families soon. They're all such beautiful kids and their "special needs" are so manageable.

So, My Little Tomato, we know your name and we know your birthday. We know you're beautiful and we know that we'll do our best to bring you happiness, love, fun, laughter and all the good things we can. I hope that I'm a good mommy to you and I hope you will love our family. I hope you don't think it's terrible to have a sister that is your same age. I'll do my best to give you all the special care and attention you'd like and deserve. I want you be able to do whatever you want when you grow up, and we'll do our best to continue building your little foundation so it's strong and steady for you as you grow.

Here's a possible time line for our paperwork to be pushed through:

Letter of Intent: 8/13/07
Prior Approval: Sometime in September, Let's say it's the 20th, just for fun.
Dossier to China: Right after the Prior Approval is sent. It's all ready to go, we just need the PA before we can send it in.
Log In Date: About 3 weeks after the Dossier is sent. In this imaginary mock up time line, that would make it October 4.
Letter Of Acceptance: Could be fast, could be slow. Let's put it on the slow side, just for kicks. I'll say it's 125 days. So that means we'll get our LOA on March 3 2008.
Travel Approval: About 4 weeks after the LOA. Again, this is a super, duper slow estimate. This will give us permission to travel to get our daughter.
Actual Travel: 3-4 weeks after the Travel approval is given. So, we may go sometime in May if this pretend time line holds true.

I doubt this will actually happen this way, though. As pessimistic as I am sometimes, I think we'll travel faster than this. I'm thinking sometime in February. Jorg is guessing sometime in April. We'll see who's right. I'm estimating long, though. If we travel sooner, I'll be happily surprised and not disappointed if we wait longer than I expect if I think we're traveling in November, for instance.

And for now...we wait....

1 comment:

chad-roscoe said...

Hey it was great to meet you today.
Saw this and thought that if you haven't seen it you might be interested for the future:
http://www.nevusnetwork.org/index.htm
Good luck with your TA!
:)
Di