The other woman

I always thought Chrisfeeney preferred blondes until I saw the way he just melted around a certain little female at a recent get together with friends. She couldn't stop starring at him...smiling...demanding all of his attention...she couldn't keep her hands off of him..she practically threw herself at him, literally...oh, he was quite taken with her. I can't deny it, she was adorable..dark hair..dark eyes..beautiful skin...all that, plus a sweet personality to match. Not to worry though, I'm talking about 14 month old Ava. Ava is the daughter of Susan and Rich (who are awesome!!) and she is the cutest little thing. Ava is from Lang Son, which is the current home of Baby F. I'm sure Baby F and Ava will become fast friends once we bring her home.
You didn't really think Chrisfeeney would leave me for another woman did you?? come on, anyone who knows Chrisfeeney knows that 'he ain't got no game!'

Ten years ago tomorrow....

.....Chrisfeeney and I were married, I know, I can't believe it's been that long. I'm pretty certain that a few people (I won't mention any names) were hungover the day of our wedding from overindulging in few too many cocktails at the rehearsal dinner the night before, but that's a whole other story. It was a lovely wedding and a wonderful celebration, except for that picture of me in my beautiful ivory gown with a cigar in my mouth, damn photographer!!

To celebrate, we are leaving for NYC tomorrow morning. We are staying for two nights and I'm sooo excited. This may be the last time the two of us get to go away as a twosome...soon enough, we'll be a threesome, so we better party like it's 1999...we better drop it like it's hot...we better.....yeah right, we'll be in bed (and fast asleep) by 11:00 pm.

Yo shorty, it's your birthday, we're gonna party....

...like it's your birthday, we're gonna sip Bacardi like it's your birthday, and you know we don't give a @&*# cause it's your birthday! Don't you just love the poetically profound lyrics of 50 cent? So, Baby F turned 7 months old today - woohoo, happy birthday baby girl!!!. Time is certainly flying by, I can't believe she is 7 months already. I'm so ready to hop on a plane and go get that cheeky little monkey.

What's in a nickname?

Nicknames are interesting. A lot of people have them, but are known primarily by their 'real' name. This, however, is not the case with me. While I was looking at this blog, it occurred to me that my name appears as Chook, which may be very confusing to some of you who know me as Kim. I thought I should explain.
When I was born, my Granny (my mother's mother) who was from Scotland, looked at me lying in my crib and said "she's so tiny...what a wee Chookie birdie" which is a Scottish children's song about a wee bird. From that day on I was called Chookie. I have never been called Kim by my family in my entire life and I'm not even kidding. When I was married, the priest even said "do you Christopher take Chook......" I'm totally serious.
With that being said, Chris and I have the most beautiful name picked out for Baby F. It's a strong, Irish name and it fits her perfectly. Yeah right, my parents have a different idea. They have been referring to Baby F as Petal...It's my fault though, back in the day I did mention that I thought Petal was a pretty little name. Of course, I changed my mind about a day later and moved on to a different name. Yeah, well...my parents didn't. They continue to refer to their granddaughter as Petal. I have feeling that 'Petal' is the new 'Chook'. Hey, it's all good!!!!;)

We're back!

So... many of you know that as of September 1, 2008, Vietnam has ended adoptions with the United States. Which in this crazy world of adoption meant that we needed to have an 'official referral' by that time in order to complete our adoption. For the last several months it has been extremely stressful for us to wait and wonder if we would receive a referral, therefore, I stopped updating the blog because we simply were not certain if the adoption would happen. Incredibly enough, on July 10th, we received a referral for a 4 month old baby girl from Lang Son. She is, and I'm not just saying this, a super cute baby!!! We feel so blessed and fortunate that we received this referral that we are ready to start up this blog again so that friends and family can follow our journey to Baby F.
Those of you who are familiar with us, know that this will be our third daughter. Our identical twin daughters, Catherine & Margaret, who we were blessed to hold in our arms for just a short time, but who remain our hearts forever, are smiling down from heaven at the newest member of the family!!
Enough for now, time to get organized.

We are officially logged in....Let the wait begin....

We are officially logged into the system!! which means that we are able to receive a CFC (child for consideration) once a child becomes available. The wait time for a baby girl is approximately 120 days, according to our caseworker. So...yes, this is good news!

Chrisfeeney thinks it might be a good idea to start getting organized, i.e. prepare lists for travel and baby needs, buy furniture for the nursery, enroll Chook into an organizational skills class (ok, not really, but I'm so not organized) but seriously, it's seriously time to get serious.

My friend Susan, who is also adopting a baby girl from Vietnam, is soooo organized. Susan has a list for everything, she's the bomb!!!!

I think the first thing I need to do is make a list of all the things I need to do...that doesn't sound hard...I can do that. Ok, let's see...I think my list will look something like this:

Things to do:

• Call Susan and ask her to send me all the lists she compiled during her adoption process.

There, I feel much better now.

Blog schmog...this is easy!

After spending the last several months following other people's blogs, we've decided to grab a helmet and get into the game!! I'll just give a brief update where we are in the adoption process. Our dossier has been sent to Vietnam and is currently being translated. We are now waiting for that all important milestone (one of many) 'the log in date' Once we are logged into the system, we are officially on the clock and can receive a child for consideration. We have been told that our wait could be anywhere from three to six months for a baby girl (Baby F!) I will update everyone when we receive word of our log in date.