Team Kollar

So we have been matched with a baby girl. What now?

1) I try to make it for 3 minutes without looking at her picture and sighing. Can't do it yet. The first two mornings after we received our referral, I woke up at 6:30am just because I had to look into those eyes. Bill had a dream about her last night. It is SO amazing to be able to picture that sweet face when we pray now.

2) We mailed in the paperwork to make our referral official. Paperwork gives me a nervous tick. I was relieved to send it off.

3) Yesterday, we had a conversation about the transition when we bring her home with the social worker at our agency. This was eye-opening for us as we think about the reality of what her needs will be as an infant dealing with grief and loss and needing to bond with us. We are going from having children who can do just about anything for themselves, to having a little one who will need us for everything. It will be a big change, but an even bigger privilege. We hold with honor the opportunity to care for her and teach her how to trust. This weighty task means we need to think through how we will make this transition as a family. We've got lots of reading to do and y'all know what a big reader I am. Apparently, the articles in People magazine about Brad and Angelina don't really do much to prepare one to be an adoptive parent. If they did, I'm pretty sure I'd win the award for Most Prepared Adoptive Parent Ever.

4) We will be waiting to hear if and when we are assigned a court date. For those of you who don't know, the way the process works is our orphanage director will go to court on our behalf in Ethiopia. If we pass, she becomes legally ours and usually traveling to meet her and bring her home is about a month after that. We should hear in the next month about our court date. They generally are about a month to six weeks after receiving the referral. We are hoping for a July Court date and that we pass the first time, which doesn't always happen. If we do, we would travel in August. This is all a "best case scenario" situation and we really only have a slight chance of it working out this way. But we are praying toward this end. The Ethiopian Court System in not in session during their rainy season, which is the months of August and September. So if we don't pass court in July, October will be the earliest we can travel. Regardless of what our scenario may be, we trust that God knows the right time for us to bring her home.

5) If we get to travel yet this summer, there are quite a few things around the house that need to happen. She kinda needs a place to sleep. And it might be good for her to have a place to put all the clothes my mother is going to want to buy for her. We had hoped to have a garage sale in August to raise money for Tate's airfare to Ethiopia. If we are able to pull that off, it would help if the garage was cleaned out and not so "obstacle course-y."

6) The naming discussions are in full swing around our house. Emmie and I are the only ones who truly enjoy them. Those conversations are a post all to themselves, especially when Jack is a part of them. She has a given name, which we refer to her as around the house. This will remain as part of her name for sure. The kids have nicknamed her Koko (for Littlest Kollar), but we won't be officially naming her until she is legally ours.

So we have quite a bit to think about and to do. But we realize much of this is out of our control. We want our hope to be in God, not in everything working out the way we want it to.

Sorry, gotta go. It's been way longer than 3 minutes now and I have some picture-gawking and subsequent sighing to do.