Waiting to Plan

Oh sigh... it looks like we won't find out our official travel dates for another day or two. It's seven WORKIN' days, not seven days, from the court date. I kinda suspected that would be the case, but today it was confirmed by my agency.

In the meantime, I'm totally nesting. Nick finds it hilarious and keeps calling me pregnant. Last night I actually bought a scrub brush and a giant bottle of bleach and scrubbed the kitchen floor on my hands and knees. Finally, it is clean! Like, really clean, without all those pockets of grime trapped in the lovely texture that is supposed to make the linoleum look like real tile. Today, I got the bathroom as well. I still need to mop the hardwoods, but that's going to be typical ops, not this above and beyond stuff.

If only it were this easy...

I've been buying the girls winter clothes at the ARC and Goodwill, and today I picked up these cute boots for Geri. I hope they're her size. While at the orphanage I asked for her shoe size and instead of just checking the label inside her shoes, the workers tried to measure the length of her foot. So rather than a European shoe size that I could easily convert, I got a random length in centimeters. Was that the length of the shoe? The length of her foot? Your guess is as good as mine! I managed to find a chart and figure out what shoe size it ought to be equivalent to, but then I went to buy them and they looked HUGE. Sigh. I've been buying two pairs of every shoe... one in 9 and one in 10.

Next time, I'm bringing one of these

Clothing is a bit easier, since I have her height and weight measurements and those are more reliable (marginally, when they were measuring her height she had her legs spread out so I think it might have been off a bit.) Still, I'm buying all sorts of different sizes of things because I don't know what will work. Buying clothes for your children is almost an art, really. Take Big Brother, for instance. He's recently 5 years old... but I have to buy pretty much everything in a size 6. With the exception of pajamas, which must be a size 8. He can wear a size 5 in t-shirts and some sweaters, but all button-downs must be at least a 6! His shoes are a size 12 or 13, but his socks need to be larger because socks never seem to be the size they claim they are. It's not easy shopping for growing people!

All of this is, of course, troubles I'm overjoyed to have. I can't wait for the travel dates, because then I will start actually packing bags! Man, that will be exciting. And intimidating. Mostly exciting, I hope...