Yeah!! The second medical report is in!!

Ok, so this is pretty exciting stuff! We just got Asher's 2nd medical report in! Yippee! This is a very exciting step because once Ryan and I "approve" these medicals all our documents get submitted to court. Right now court is still closed, but it will re-open on the 12th of October. Our case manager told me today that once we are submitted to court we usually have a court date within a couple weeks and that court date is usually 4 to 6 weeks out. She also said that historically once court reopens (it closes like this every year), it tends to move faster than that because there isn't the backlog of cases. But things seem to change from minute to minute in Ethiopia and I know our agency is very hard pressed to put a standard on anything.

Looking over the medical, he looks good. Not that I can read lab results, but all the big stuff was still negative. Our caseworker said that in general his lab work looked impressive, except for a little anemia. Our caseworker/agency really recommends taking these more extensive medicals to an International Assistance (IA) doctor. We have an IA doctor in Cincy that we used for Anna and Gee, and she was great. It is a little pricey to use her for this pre-adoption stuff, but I think we might just to be safe. Our case worker did say something about the urinalysis results not looking familiar to her.

Asher is 11 lbs and his measurements are: height - 25 inches, head circum - 15.5 inches and chest - 15 inches. Age wise we still don't know exactly how old he is. I was originally told that he was about 5 months old (about 6 weeks ago), but his first set of medicals put him at just 3 months. Birthdates in Ethiopia for adopted kids are pretty arbitrary. Especially with kids that have been abandoned. So, the medicals we just got today said at the time of exam (dated Sept. 30th) Asher was 2/12 months old. Which is 2 months out of a 12 month year (the Ethiopian calander year is 13 months, so this age was "converted" for the report). However, I just got a monthly update yesterday (in addition to the medicals today) and they said he was 4 months old. Confusing enough??? Truly, it isn't that big of a deal, but I kind of like knowing he is a little younger than originally thought. It kind of makes me feel like I am not missing as much with him. From all I have read so far, it seems that 4 months seems like the most reasonable guess, so I am going to go with that. There will be a birth date placed on the court documents and I am sure we will just go with that, but we won't really know what that date is, until I guess we travel?

So, very good news and I love being just a little bit closer!!

Julie