I sit in front of my computer wishing I could type the words, “We know when we are leaving for China!” But alas… I cannot. Yet, it IS getting closer to knowing and we do have a timeframe. We thought it would be March, but the way China is flying through approvals lately, it looks like it could be end of January or middle of February. China has their Chinese New Year Feb 8th and the offices and government buildings all shut down for a solid week. Nothing gets done adoption related during that time. Would love to get over there Before the CNY, but we just have to see.
A lot of people know this, but we have chosen a name for our little man. His name will be Jackson Zhi Phillips, but we will call him mainly “Jack.” The name came to me in a dream and I mentioned it to Josh and he liked it so that’s what we’ll go with. Josh loves the idea of having a son named Jack. Josh and Jack. It sounds kinda cute, doesn’t it?
I am in full nesting mode, ha! Sounds funny because I’m not pregnant and we aren’t even adopting a baby. But that doesn’t matter to my planning brain. Not a bit. I love decorating a five year old boys room! We are doing fire engine red bunk beds which I think Jack will really love. The biggest wow factor to his room is the World map wallpaper that covers all four walls. I love how we can see where China is and the vast amount of ocean that separates us. I show our girls Charlotte and tell them we will start here and then I take my hand and drag it all the way across the map until it reaches China and say, “This is where your brother is.” Libby doesn’t love that we will be gone for 14 days. Yesterday I told her that we would have a bag of presents for Bronley and a bag of presents for her. Each of the presents will be numbered, 1-14. Every day they will open a present and when there aren’t many presents left, she’ll know we are close to coming home. I get how hard it is for Libby to think of us not being here for 14 days because when I think about leaving our girls that long, I get some serious anxiety over it. Thank goodness my parents will be here at the house day in and day out, but gosh, how much we will miss them! We’ll look back I know and this will all seem like a blip in time and it’ll have been worth the time apart from them. Jack will no longer be an orphan when we bring him home. He will have what he’s always dreamed of having, a family.

My next blog entry will be a good update, I promise! We should have travel approval coming up here relatively soon. Just sent our visa applications off last week so waiting on those to be sent to us. Moving right along to our boy.