peanut has a name

if things progress all the way to adoption with peanut we will get to give him a middle name. and we've decided what it's going to be. we also reserve the right to use the name again if he goes on to someone else. but for now...here's the scoop. we are really into the meaning of names. in the bible, genesis chapter 30, it talks about jacob and leah and their trying for a child. leah was unable to get pregnant so she gave her handmaid, zilpah, to jacob to bear children for her. she had 2 sons and leah named them gad, which means good fortune, and asher, which means "he makes his mother happy" or simply "happy" or "the women will call me happy" depending on the version. for this reason we are going to name him asher. i know, technically he's our first and should be called gad but it just doesn't have the ring as asher. (totally kidding-i would never name a kid gad. but if you named your kid gad....um...it's a wonderful name. i'm sure you are very fortunate....to have friends that are very kind and supportive.) i will continue to call him peanut for the sake of the blog but am excited to have gotten to chose a name for our little buddy. and continue to hope that things progress and we get to give him our last name.
in that vein of information, we found out today that we have a date for the termination hearing for sweet pea. well, not the exact DATE but we have the week. the last week of may. the week before that they'll give us an exact date and time. at that point the case will be presented to the judge and the judge will decide if the parents rights should be terminated, or if they did all that they should have in order to get her back or if the county did not do all they possibly could to reunite sweet pea with her birth parents. i feel so excited. like it's been coming for so long and all of a sudden it's here i feel like my head is spinning that it could actually happen. that i could actually be a mother. with a real live daughter. not a pretend foster-daughter but a full fledged she's-mine-for-the-rest-of-her-life daughter!!!! and then the countdown begins for peanut.