random thoughts

Last week we had a fun little excursion.  Tim had a one-day conference in a city halfway between here and my grandma's house, so we all drove up together and while Tim was in his conference, Esther and I spent the day (nearly seven hours!) in a science museum.  It was nice to have a day that wasn't about accomplishing anything but just about playing and exploring.  Esther was seriously considering trying to take a nap by the end of our time there, but she made it! When Tim picked us up, we drove on to Grandma's house (Esther slept in the car) and had a mini family reunion with her, my aunt, and two cousins.  We just got to stay overnight and part of the next day, but it was really nice to get to see family we don't see very often and to celebrate Grandma's birthday.  One of my cousins had never met Esther, and the other hadn't seen her since we were in China adopting her (that cousin lived in China at the time).  Esther took surprisingly long to warm up to everyone when we arrived, but once she reverted to her usual attention-loving self she had a wonderful time playing with everyone.  At one point I came into the living room to see her holding a "story hour" with my cousins.  She was in her little chair holding up a book, and they were sitting attentively on the floor in front of her.  I came in just in time to hear her say, "And there was a storm!"  ("Another one?" a cousin interjected. "Oh no!")  Esther continued, "And the T-Rex got wet!  And it wasn't waterproof!"

While we were gone, we got word that our Article 5 has been issued!!  That is our final immigration approval from the U.S., and it came faster than I had expected.  On the other hand, I had thought that our TA (the last document we need in order to travel) would be issued immediately after our Article 5...and we're still waiting.  :-(  So we still haven't gotten plane tickets, and we want to be in China meeting our son a week from Monday!  We would appreciate prayers that our TA is issued tonight (Wednesday China time) and our consulate appointment date tomorrow night (Thursday China time).

Tim and I are trading off being stressed.  Last weekend he dedicated himself to helping me get things checked off our checklist, and we got a lot accomplished.  Now he is frantically trying to finish up a paper that he wants to submit to a journal before we go.  Last night I helped him enter some articles into his list of references.  Engineering/physics is a weird field in that every journal (or group of related journals) has its own style of formatting--no MLA or APA that everyone in the field follows.  So on at least three separate occasions I had to go back and change the formatting of all the entries I had already done because we discovered that the journal Tim thinks the paper will be submitted to did something differently than the example I was following (e.g. I had to go back and type in page ranges for every article when I had just put in the beginning page number of each article).  And then if the article ends up going to a different journal, Tim will have to go back and reformat everything AGAIN.  Ugh.  

This morning Esther said to me, "I don't like FH [her soon-to-be brother].  I am going to be so mean to him when he comes.  He's going to be mean to me, and he's going to say, 'I don't like Esther.'"  I can't absolutely assure her that he won't dislike her, so I mostly just listened empathetically.  At least she knows it's okay to talk about her negative feelings.  We talked a little bit just now (I'm writing while she takes her bath) about what we are going to do in China.  She is excited about the trip, but told me again that she doesn't want FH and she is going to spit on him.  I don't think she means it.  (The spitting part, that is.)