Paperwork and Pink Things

Oh my heck,

We are almost there.

Hoping for immigration approval soon. We submitted our 1600a on April 26th, and our homestudy was received nearly 2 weeks ago, yet we STILL have not received fingerprinting appointments. We're hoping to get the letter Tuesday, walk in on Wednesday, and have approval by next week.

Oh, and we just might be doing what's called a "married single" adoption. This essentially means that I would be traveling to Ukraine alone. Why? Because Donald has training in August that he CAN NOT get out of. On our current timeline, we would most likely get a travel date in late July or early August. Yes, we could petition for a new date, but Donald's training won't be complete until mid-September... do we really want to wait THAT much longer? Nope, so we're looking into me flying solo. Literally. Heh.

On a lighter note, I'm having fun filling my online shopping carts full of frilly things. Once we have an SDA appointment we'll actually purchase, but for now I'm contently window-shopping my heart out.

Oh, and I reeally love matching them, a lot. If I they can cutely coordinate, I'm sold.

(the colors look slightly off, but they match in person)

I could get myself into a lot of trouble shopping for little girls. Good thing my husband's a financial grinch. We balance each other out.

Carseat Geek Fulfillment

Brigitte has a carseat!

Let me preface this entry by telling everyone what a huge nerd I am about car seat safety. Automobile accidents are the leading cause of death, overwhelmingly, for children under the age of 14. As a parent-in-waiting, I plan on taking a few simple steps to prevent my kids from becoming victim to that reality. I couldn't live with myself if the unthinkable happened, knowing that I could have potentially prevented it.
Some have questioned why I'm even bothering to purchase a carseat for an almost-4-year-old child (she can just be in a backless booster, can't she?), but it's then that I remind people how legal standards and cultural norms don't necessarily equate to safety.
It wasn't long ago that even seat belts weren't mandated, and booster seats? Har har! What paranoid parents!

So here's what we just purchased, via Diapers.com :



It normally MSRPs for $279 (uh, no thank you!), but is regularly on sale for $209 (Amazon is always a good bet). However, thanks to the Extended Rear Facing group on BabyCenter, I found a coupon code, stackable on sale items, that brought it down to $167. Oh, and free shipping.

The Britax Frontier has the highest 5-point restraint capabilities, both for height and weight, on the market. She'll fit in the harness well into the school age years. After that, it converts into booster mode up to 64" and 120 pounds. Shoot, if I went on a diet I could use this thing!

I'm super excited. Sadly, the only sacrifice I had to make was fabric color. Simple, sophisticated, plain ol' black was soooold out.



Bummer! The tan looked gross, IMO, so I went with the lesser of evils available: Cowmooflage.



Aside from the obvious safety features, my favorite thing is that you can adjust the harness height without having to re-thread the seat. Anyone who's had to undo a rock-solid carseat install to re-thread a seat knows how awesome that feature is.

If anyone wants to learn more about the benefits of keeping your kids harnessed beyond the toddler years, here are a few videos I've found that I like. I'll warn you though, they mention children who have died in boosters... terribly sad, and entirely preventable. :-(

Diapers.com has a coupon code you can stack on top of sale items right now. If you go to soap.com (their sister-site) and add a small filler item for a dollar or two, you can then add the code MAKEMYDAY for greater savings. The code will work without adding a soap.com item, but the discount increases further if you do. A savings of 40ish percent and free 2 day shipping?! You can't beat that! ...just wanted to share! :-D Hopefully someone else can get good use out of this awesome sale & code combo!

Amazon Makes Life Easier

Blogs without pictures are boring, and my camera cord has been MIA for a couple months now. I've been conveniently using that as an excuse not to blog... but no more!

I finally broke down and ordered a new one from Amazon five minutes ago. It cost me a whopping $3 (actually, it was $0.25 but they got me with shipping), and within a week this blog should be back in business.

I also bought:

This book is wildly popular in adoption circles, and I've heard a lot of great things about it. In an attempt to be more frugal, I've been trying to convince myself to use the library more often... but this one felt like a purchase.

Donald has a very busy work schedule and has little time to read, so I like to highlight the most relevant and important sections of parenting books for him to flip though. You just can't do that with library books.

Shopping Complications

However trivial it may be, one of the most difficult aspects of Ukrainian adoption is that you don't specifically know the age or gender of the child until you arrive in country (at which point you are presented with several profiles of potential matches, much like you would normally do prior to traveling, with other countries). It's not like we don't have a say in things, but between the Ukrainian system and God's will... we could come home with just about anything, haha!

All we know is that Little Winn will be somewhere between 12 months and 5 years old.

So... pacifiers or preschool? Time will only tell! We'll be thrilled with either, but my obsessive compulsive planning/online-shopping has become a bit more complicated lately.

Thus far, these are the only safe purchases I've decided on, as they will be appropriate for any child in our age category.

1. A Britax Boulevard car seat (or seat with similar capabilities and features).

I've already decided to keep my kids rear-facing for as long as possible. It's far safer, and I'm cool with swimming against the cultural stream on this issue. The seat rear-faces to 35 pounds, so a 1-3ish year old would be well protected. It can then be used forward-facing, with 5 point restraints, to 65 pounds. As I also plan to keep my kids "locked down" in 5-points longer than most, a seat like this will work for any child in the age range we've applied for.

2. Toddler Bed. I googled crib mattress measurements. I also consulted a CDC growth chart. Any normal 1-5 year old will fit in one nicely. I know, I'm obsessive. I have extra time on my hands with Donald still deployed... so go easy on the judging ;-) . If we get a squirmy 1 year old, we'll pick up a pack n play. We also have a twin bed in the craft room, so if Little Winn turns out to be a gargantuan kindergartner, we're equally set.

The inability to fulfill my insatiable shopping-itch is a good thing. It forces me to keep things simple, and to keep pinching those precious pennies.

...because seriously, when Little Winn gets here, we're going to the mall, and staying until they kick us out. That requires lots of pinched pennies, I'll tell you what.