Our dossier reached the lawyers in Kazakhstan last Friday. They have to get it registered at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then it goes to the Ministry of Education (MOE). We need MOE's approval so that we can get our visas to travel.

We picked out carpeting, blinds and an overhead fan for Cameron's room last weekend. Last night the room was measured for the carpeting. We also bought the crib mattress and a playpen/playard. Today I went to the baby store and bought a fantastic carseat.

Sometimes it seems all too wonderful to be true. I'm going to be Cameron's mama soon. I can hardly wait to hold him in my arms for the first time.

It's time for an extremely exciting update! Tom and I accepted our referral last Friday night. We are going to name him Cameron Carlpatrick after both of his grandfathers. Yesterday, we received the video, and have watched it already at least 10 times. He is so sweet and cute! The caregiver was trying to get him to smile. He did a little, but he was still getting over being sick when the video was made. And, if that's not enough good news, our dossier has left the Kaz Embassy in NYC and is on it's way to Kazakhstan. This means that in a month, we should get our travel dates!

We spent the weekend painting Cameron's bedroom. We've made really good progress, but still have a ways to go. I can't wait to experiment with painting a sky on the ceiling. I have these images in my mind of Cameron laying in his bed, looking up at a starry sky.

We heard back about our referral! They even have a new video of him. We got the answers to our important questions and new measurements. They commented that he's a cute baby. He's babbling and smiling and seems to be growing normally, although he is still on the small side. I talked to Dr. Bledsoe's office, and she will look at his information tomorrow. If all goes well, I'll be getting an email from her by the end of the next day! The poor little guy had bronchitis in December and spent several days in the hospital. Dr. Bledsoe's nurse said they've been getting a lot of sick babies this last month. It's just the time of year.

I'm really starting to get excited now. If we accept him, it's entirely possible that we'll be traveling in March.

Time for another update. We talked to Dr. Johnson last Thursday evening and we ended up with a consultation with Dr. Bledsoe yesterday. I cannot say enough good things about Dr. Bledsoe. She was so wonderful to talk to, so understanding and so thorough. To summarize our whole conversation, I'd say we are now cautiously optimistic that the little guy is healthy. Dr. Bledsoe has a couple concerns, so she gave me a short list of questions to ask our agency. We called our coordinator and she will see if she can get the answers we need. We are praying that they can find the information we need and the news we get is good news.

We made some more progress in preparing the baby's room. We bought his bedding which is the cutest Noah's Ark theme. We also picked out paint samples and I've gotten tips on how to paint clouds on the ceiling. The bedding has a starry sky background, so I'm going to try to paint a blue sky with clouds and then stencil glow in the dark stars and maybe a moon. We're going to paint the paneling blue and trim it in white. This last month has made us realize that we can't dilly dally around.