For REAL?

We finally got what we've been waiting so long for - our travel approval!  Let me hear a big "WOOHOOOO!!"  The U.S. says we can bring Jin home, so now China has said we can go there to get him.  So much international back-and-forth to get this thing done.  Our tentative travel date is Thursday, August 2nd, which is only a week and a half away. 

But even as I type this, it still seems just a bit surreal.  When you've waited and waited and waited for something, and you've talked about it ad nauseum, and you've planned for it forever, and you've imagined it 1,498,302 (approximately) times . . . when it's finally upon you it's weird how hard it is to truly digest.  I think a lot of things are like that.  I've planned big vacations a year in advance before, and the feeling is similar.  I remember having these thoughts right before I got married.  I imagine when someone is dealing with the long, difficult illness of a loved one, and the inevitability of his or her death, when the end actually comes it can seem as though it was somehow able to sneak right up.

I feel this way about our adoption.  Not the comparison to the above-mentioned death scenario, of course!  But that surreal feeling?  Definitely. 

Even though I have pictures and video of him,
and I feel this incredible sense of connection to him,
and we're painting his room and arranging all his little things,
and this is all very much real,
I still feel kind of like it isn't, well, real. 
Not yet. 

Maybe it's because we've waited for so long and it's always seemed like something that's going to happen way in the future.  I hesitate to even say that when I know many people wait much longer for their children.  Surely we all know people who have tried and tried to get pregnant, sometimes to no avail, or others who have been through a much lengthier process to adopt.  When I think of these people I feel wonderfully blessed.  By the time we travel, it will have been only fifteen months for us.  A relatively short time in the grander scheme of things.

Maybe it's because I'm not actually pregnant with Jin.  If I were, I'd be able to feel his little body kicking and elbowing against mine, from the inside.  That's tangible, and any woman who's experienced it will tell you that there's no denying that the imminent birth of a child seems quite real indeed.  Thinking about it reminds me that there was a woman who felt Jin kicking and elbowing inside her, but following that train of thought would lead to the longest sidebar ever in the history of this blog (and my Legion of Readers can attest to the fact that sidebars aren't uncommon).  So maybe I'll save that for another time.

Maybe it's because I'm in a hotel in room in Tallahassee with Caroline's softball team doing nothing that even remotely resembles getting ready for a trip to China.  Yeah, that could have something to do with it.  So that means when I get home sometime tomorrow evening I'll immediately dive into the long "to do" list I started on the way up here, combining it with the list I was already working on, and I'll make fast progress toward preparing for a very real trip to China to pick up a very real boy and bring him home to be a part of our family.

Forever.  And that's for real.