I’m a list girl. I love to make lists, check things off, keep track of things.

Guess how many lists I can make now that I am an expectant adoptive mother?

Registry lists, shower guest lists, “things to do” for school lists, “things to do” for the baby’s room lists, “things to do” around the house lists, things to buy lists, things to fix lists, things to do before the baby comes lists, ideas for gifts for our birthmother lists, questions for my social worker lists, things to research lists, things to list on my blog lists 🙂

See – I’m a list girl.

So the rest of today’s post is brought to you in list form.

Random Updates from Rachel:

* My sister-in-law is due 5 days after me. She finds out tomorrow officially if she’s having a boy or a girl. That means S could find out, too, soon!

* I’m conflicted on the whole shower thing. My family and friends want to throw me baby showers. I can’t decide how I feel about that. The frugal (aka cheap) side of me is all for it, because that’s less we’ll have to buy in January. The wounded infertile part of me still fears failure and is afraid I’ll have to return all the presents.

* Our home laptop crashed. CRASHED. The mother board is toast. Luckily a parent at my school is also a tech god and he retrieved all of our info off of our hard drive. He is also converting that into an external hard drive for us. In the meantime, I’m using my mother-in-law’s laptop from work. But computers have become almost a need, so we’re going to have to shell out the cash for a new one.

* We’re going camping this weekend, and I hope to think about things other than adoption, our birthmother, and our baby.

* FAT CHANCE, RACHEL!!

* I ordered 4 books today: “Inside Transracial Adoption,” “Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother,” “Tell Me Again About the Night I was Born,” and “How I was Adopted: Samantha’s Story.” I ordered 2 copies each of the last two books: one for us & our children and one for my brother and his children. My brother is concerned about how to explain to his girls that their cousins are adopted. We figure reading stories about adoption to them is a great way to start (plus, one is one and the other is due in 19 weeks!! It’s not like they’re ready for deep conversations!)

* Thank you to my friends who suggest my horrible cramping is labor pains. However, if that is the case, I have been in labor for approximately 480 days (since I was 14). I don’t think anyone is ever in labor that long 🙂 Maybe I’ll consider those two days in January labor pains…but for now, I just consider them pain.

* I’m very emotional this week – lots of things have set me to tears. I can’t decide if it’s girl week or adoption stuff.

* My mother is driving me crazy.

* My husband just mooned me. 🙂

* We got a bill from the lawyer. A BILL. We just sent them a gazillion dollars because they found us a match, and we got a bill for travel expenses (from them traveling to meet S for the first time) and “other miscellaneous expenses.” Like what? Stamps? Coffee? Paper? I immediately went through our contract, and unfortunately, they aren’t cheating us. Grrr…..will we ever stop writing checks to them?

* I’ve decided my body issues stem from the fact mine is broken. That’s probably a whole BOOK in and of itself, but I just came to that conclusion this week.

* No one has probably read all the way to here, so I will just say, “Good night!”

* Contrary to what my time stamp may say, it is after 10:00 pm on Wednesday when I post this!