Kylie's care package

Last Thursday I was giddy with excitement that I was finally going to be able to communicate or establish some sort of contact with Kylie somehow via this little care package. It was sent by Fedex and on Monday there was a little hiccup with customs but it was finally sorted out and it is expected to arrive at the orphanage tomorrow. The little photo album contains pictures of Sean and I. My hope is that the nanny will point to Kylie on each of the pictures and teach her mama and dada as I've heard others have done this in the past. The disposable cameras are for the nannies to take pictures of Kylie, her foster family and friends so that we can share with Kylie later in life. The ducky is a teething blanket and finally the adorable softer than soft teddy bear is one of Kylie's first Christmas gifts from grandma Rita and grandpa Ed.

Families do not always get the cameras back but lately it seems that the chances have been much higher than they once were. Let's hope that we do get them back and wouldn't it be a dream if she had some sort of slight recognition of us when they place her in our arms for the very first time?

Now for the updates:
I received a call from the agency yesterday that our travel meeting has been set for Tuesday, August 8th from 10am-1pm. This usually means that we will have travel approvals from China and hopefully a consulate appt. If we don't have all of the info by then, the agency is confident that we will have the info shortly thereafter. Also, families usually travel 2-3 wks after a travel mtg. Woohoo!! Everything looks like it is right on track towards a late Aug or early Sep travel. I believe we can expect travel approvals next week! The end of the month is when we anxiously awaited referrals, now we are anxiously awaiting those travel approvals.

We are expecting our travel packet to arrive in the mail this week which means we can apply for our visas now. These are major steps towards being able to bring Kylie home sooooooon!

I finally started "pre-packing" the items that I plan to take for Kylie. Aside from some of the obvious necesities, there are some things I can't seem to stop obsessing over....her outfits. I have a few outfits to choose from but I can't seem to figure out which is going to be her very first american outfit. You know what I mean, the caregivers dress her up in 4 layers of outfits. My understanding is that they do this even if it is 95 degrees out. So what should be the first, very first outfit we put her in? You know we are going to take hundreds of pictures in those first several hours when she is finally all ours. Is this what some new moms go thru when they are planning the outfit for their first newborn to come home in or is it just me? Before you answer and decide to poke fun at me, keep in mind that I have to take 2-3 different sizes because although she may be 12 months at the time, she may be too small or in rare cases too large for 12 month old clothes. Oh and everything needs to coordinate. Sean already gave me a hard time about this when he saw the bathing suit, matching hoodie, sun hat from Aunt Kimmie and swim shoes from Aunt Colleen that I had picked out to pack. This is so much fun!!

P.S. Yesterday Kylie turned 11 monts old