Naina's Baby(brother)moon

The preparations for Krish are well underway at home. We're converting the study into his room so that means a bunch of changes - cleaning/filing, selling furniture, buying new furniture, painting, closet organizing. The list goes on. The process until now has been all paperwork so we're all very excited about finally getting around to the fun stuff!

Naina's been a real supporter of the newly divided attention - we're spending most weekend time working on Krish's room and she's been awesome (and even enthusiastic)
about it.  So, before we all travel to India, we wanted to fit in a trip for Naina. She picked Disneyland so off we went!

Just got back from a "Naina-weekend" of hanging out at the pool, visiting Disneyland, and eating at one of the restaurants where the Real Housewives of OC hang out - that last part was for me ;-)

Naina's been helping, too

We had a terrific helper. Naina made all the 6 sets of family photos we had to submit, plus an album to send to Krish so he can see us while we wait to meet each other.  Big sis is very excited!!

Getting home and getting going!

Things moved fast, yet slow at the same time, from that day when we accepted the referral. We had to send our home study and dossier to India once we got back in town from our trip.  It was a mad rush - we got home on a Sunday night and Anjali was supposed to drop off the dossier at the agency by noon on Tuesday.  Well...we couln't find it! We thought our agency had kept it, but they swore they gave it back to us. Either way - we need a new one - PRONTO! (btw, our agency would later tell us that they did indeed have it!!)

We spent the next 36 hours recreating the entire 60+ page dossier, including dragging a very ill Amit to the police station for new Police Clearance Letters, and finding a notary to re-do all the notarizations.

Finally it was done and delivered to BAAS on time. But things weren't as smooth as we thought.

The notary commission was expiring at the end of the year, and it was highly unlikely that all the court dates would be done by then. So we had to look for a new notary and get everything redone...again! Add more days...

October 3 comes around - a whole 6 weeks after we got Krish's referral. Finally we had everything in place and it was time to go up to Sacramento to apostille the dossier. We had heard nightmare stories of this taking all day. We braced ourselves and left bright and early at 6am to get there right when they opened at 8am.  Amazingly, we were in and out in 45 minutes!
Finally - *something* in this process went quickly!

Now time our documents were ready to go - for realsies!

Life's Big Changes

We have a new addition to our family!  On August 13, 2014 we got an email from our adoption agency that would finally give us what we had been eagerly awaiting for 18-months.  We're about to have a son!  Let me back up a couple of dozen months and explain....

December 2012 - Amit & I decided we were going to go for it - adoption was in our future! The first step was to put in our application to and get on the waiting list for their "Pre-Adopt Class".

March 2013 - An 8-hr pre-adopt class left us excited and overwhelmed all at once! It was going to be a long road, they kept telling us. We could never have imagined how long! The next 2 months were  all paperwork, getting our medical checkups, and getting interviewed by our social worker.

July 2013 - All paper work was finally submitted and our Home Study was complete. Aaahh. we breathed huge sighs of relief. One major thing was done!

August 2013 - we were registered with CARA in India! That's the agency that regulates the adoption process there.  Now the waiting really begins (well, the first round at least).

September 2013 - we heard nothing

October 2013 - we heard nothing

November 2013 - we heard nothing

December 2013 - still we heard nothing

2014 even came along....

January, February, March, April, May, June - ugh...nothing!!  Our excitement was fading into frustration.

July - nothing - We were worried.  Was this ever going to happen for us?

August 13 - Amit and I sat along the waterfront in Curacao. Naina was with my parents in Dallas and we had come to Curacao for a 4-day ''date".  As we sat there that afternoon, drinking our beers and enjoying the sights, Amit checked his phone, normally something that would have set me ablaze for his addiction to his phone. But what we saw made us both deliriously happy.  There it was...a referral for a 15 month-old boy in Mumbai!  And with that....here we go!!!

Here's the picture of Krish that we first fell in love with: