Sort of a Medley of Topics

Dane and Aidan love their baby sister. When I leave her on the floor, it takes every ounce of willpower they possess to leave Harper alone, already! Dane loves to get her and make her laugh.

She laughs and laughs at Dane, then Aidan wants to make her laugh, too. And since she's already tired of his rendition of "Go Tell It On The Mountain" over and over again, he just gets up in her face and says, "Harper! Harper! Don't you want to laugh at me??"

It looks like the mommy behind the camera has been discovered...

Mmmmm. Camera. I haven't eaten one of those in a while...
On a completely unrelated note, several people of late have asked me where we are in our adoption process, so I thought I would update the four of you that read this.

We have assembled the necessary paperwork and documents for our dossier (that's the thing that gets sent to China for people to go through and match us with a child). The only thing missing from our dossier is approval from USCIS, which is Immigration. USCIS received our application earlier this month, and we are waiting for a fingerprinting appointment. We expect to receive approval from USCIS within a few weeks after being fingerprinted. After we get that final piece for our dossier, we have to send the entire thing to the Secretary of State of Texas for certification, and then send it to the Chinese Consulate (I think?) for authentication. Then we send the dossier to our adoption agency for a final look-through before it gets sent to China. And then our "wait time" starts for our child. In the mean time, I have been working as much as I can stand it to try to save money for all of this!

If it sounds like I may not be completely clear on this process, it's because I'm not. It's very easy for this to get overwhelming for me, so I'm trying not to focus on anything other than "this step and the next one". China has a huge adoption program, and their process is a little different and more involved than it is for a lot of other countries.

Switching gears again--parents have been invited to Dane's school today for a PE Showcase. I had no idea what the PE Showcase would involve, since it didn't seem likely that they would have the parents watch their child run a mile in 19 minutes flat, so we had Dane give us a preview last night. Apparently a PE Showcase involves an intricate choreographed dance complete with props set to "Splish Splash I Was Taking A Bath", including the throwing in the air and subsequent spinning and catching of, a handkerchief. Dane is very excited about the whole thing. I'll let you know how it goes, if Brandon and I pass the background check and strip search that is required in the check-in process to enter the elementary school.