The Dog’s Still Alive and Other Bits of Life

I am a bit slow in relating why it would be necessary to announce that our dog is still alive.  On Tuesday, Mr. Spencer Who Likes To Dig and Eat Whatever He Can Find, was in the backyard unsupervised and moved a large rock while digging a mole hole that Kevin had dug out and filled with poison and covered with large rock to kill said mole.  Well, Spencer found it first.

Lucky me, it started bothering his stomach after he had wolfed down his entire bowl of food.  Well, I guess there is a pattern on the Oriental rug he deposited it on.  So, outside he went to throw up in a more acceptable place.  I felt so bad and worried that I had killed him by letting him get into the mole poison.

I guess Spencer has a lucky streak – or maybe it is just because he is much larger than the average mole – but he survived the poisoning. 🙂

On Friday we had our appointment with the social worker for our home study.  She is the same person who did our last home study so she didn’t have to ask all the questions she did the first time and did more of an update interview.  Even at that, we talked with her for several hours and she also talked with Kelsey and the girls.

It was progress and finally felt like we are actually doing something for our adoption.  There are new regulations that just went into affect this Spring which have changed the adoption process.  We had to complete and turn in a number of documents even before they would schedule the home study. 

Now, the home study needs to be completed before we can file for the new immigration paperwork.  This gives us official permission to bring a child to the U.S. from another country.  We cannot submit our paperwork to India until we have this permission.  Because this is a new procedure, it has been taking between three and four months to get approval.  With about a month to wait for our home study to be complete, filing of the I-800A and waiting for the approval, and then filing the dossier in India and waiting for CARA approval and then on to Indian Court, we can expect that we will not be traveling to India until February or March at the earliest.  That would be with everything working in our favor.

We know that the Lord is in control of all of this and that it will happen in His timing and it will be perfect.

The hard part about it is that in my heart, it doesn’t seem real at this point.  It really helps when you have your CARA approval (NOC) at which point they can give the child your photos and gift and they are made aware of the fact that they have a family.  This happened earlier in the process with the girls than it will with Sangeet.

Which reminds me.  Sangeet will be called “Levi Daniel”.  Kelsey jokingly asked if we were going to name Sangeet with a “K” name.  I replied (also jokingly) that since I was no outnumbered (4 to 1, K to L names) that we should name him with an “L” name.  Kelsey said, “How about Levi?” 

After thinking about it for some time, we all decided that Levi was a good name and I chose Daniel as a middle name because that is a Bible character whom I admire.

The girls’ new favorite show is “Little House on the Prairie”.  I love that show, but goodness gracious!  It makes me cry every time!  What I love about it, is that there are some great lessons to learn and the girls are able to understand the stories and what they should learn from them.

I had my interview with the psychologist regarding Kalindi’s cognitive testing.  He warned me that all the results had to be taken with a grain of salt as everything wouldn’t be completely accurate because of her being new to the English language.  His opinion was that Kalindi has short term memory issues which is making it hard for her to learn letters and sounds.  Honestly, I still think it is a little more complicated than that.  I am going to have to do some more research and see what I can find.  He did suggest that we hire someone to work with her once or twice a week.  He thought it would help her, but me as well.  It is a bit stressful going over the same material over and over and not seeming to make progress.

With the timing of our adoption, it looks like we will have almost an entire school year before Levi arrives.  I think that will be good for all of us.  It is going to be tricky enough to work with the girls separately on reading without adding another child to the mix.

I think I have you caught up.  I have been meaning to post some photos and I will try to get to that soon.