The adoption update...

We met with our social worker today. She had actually finished our home study this morning, but we had to go in this afternoon & sign a few more things and take the packages with us... we have 4 packs of paper with 80 - 100 sheets of "stuff" in it for our COMPLETED home study. yay! That's a HUGE relief to have that document, for - without it - we would not be eligible to adopt.

Afterwards, we went to Babies-R-Us to return a few (yellow) gender neutral things (we had way too much yellow clothing!) and get some blue / boy clothes. While we were there, we got a call from the social worker in Colorado. Good thing we did b/c she informed us that he is tiny... she bought some preemie clothes and he is swimming in them. So - instead of buying a few extra 0-3 month sized clothes as planned, we got some preemie clothes!

Here are some details: He is 5 lbs 15 oz. 18" long. Healthy. Full head of hair. Eating a lot.

The birth mother signed the paperwork today rescending her parental rights. These papers cannot be filed until Friday morning, however, because of the laws in Colorado. After they have been filed on Friday -- they will take 2 - 3 weeks to process. (CO needs to do some stuff / send paperwork to GA / GA to do some stuff / send papers back to CO / CO to finalize the paperwork)

Once everything is finalized, we get the call that the baby can come back to Georgia with us. One of us must stay in the state the whole time with the baby... that will be me. Todd will stay a week (or hopefully more if he can manage with work). We are flying out Monday afternoon -- and -- if we get there early enough, we will pick the baby up Monday night. If not, we'll pick him up Tuesday morning / bring him back to the hotel with us. He will be in the care of the social worker Monday once he's discharged from the hospital instead of going into state care. She's been really great so far. We're looking forward to meeting her, the birth mother Jenny... and the baby boy -- who we plan to name Mercer. Mercer Groves. (Haven't settled on a middle name yet, but we've always liked the name Mercer.)

I think that's about all we have right now. We'll update as things progress.

It's all so quick, but we're ready. I'm doing lots of laundry... Todd's printing out some additional photographs to include with the home study and making lodging arrangements. Both of us will need to figure out what to do with work. We've called our employers and they all know -- but we still need to tie up some loose ends before we go.

c