Twenty-Six

We are officially number:

On the waiting list for a girl!

We did it!

We mailed our dossier in yesterday! Praise the Lord!

I wrote a long and heartfelt post soon after about how it feels to finally reach this point after three years...and promptly lost it all. The resulting agony made me unable to attempt it again until now.

I feel like I can finally get excited about our adoption now. This is a milestone in the process that has eluded us for so long. We were so close with the Vietnam adoption process, only to have to turn back for a time. Everything that follows this point will be uncharted territory for us!

It seems like most of the process so far has taken place in the quiet background of our life. There isn't a whole lot of drama to be found in paperwork and notarizations. Also, I know I have avoided talking about it much due to the assumption that most people probably think we're crazy, given the chaos that is our current family life. As to that, all I can say is that I have come to believe that God likes to keep us right on the edge of what we think we can handle so our only choice is to rely on Him. Or something like that.

The next few months will likely pass without any excitement, in regards to the adoption of course. This is fine, since our lives are pretty full this summer. As referrals come in for other families, we will slowly move up the waiting list and will hear occasionally where we officially stand. (There is a message board where many mommys-to-be keep an unofficial list of where folks fall. This is based on the limited information that we do get about eachother. In the adoption world, there is little knowledge of what is happening with other families. Things are kept confidential to the extreme. I technically cannot post a picture or give out the name of our referred child until I have her -- and her visa -- in my hands in Ethiopia.)

Once we finally receive the name and information of a referred child, we will have a short amount of time to consult with a pediatrician trained in working with internationally-adopted children and to pray a whole lot before we submit our decision to accept the referral. We have the choice to turn down a referral, but I believe the result is moving back to the bottom of the wait list. (??) If we accept a referral and then change our mind, Ethiopia has the policy that the child is deemed unadoptable forever and we would never be able to adopt from the country of Ethiopia again. Heavy stuff.

Upon acceptance of a child, our file would move into the court system where the end result would be the declaration of the child as officially -- on paper, at least -- ours. (As I said before, we cannot really claim her as ours until we are leaving Ethiopia with her and her visa.) We will then be assigned a date to travel to Ethiopia.

For now, we wait. I will still occasionally post if there is anything of interest to be shared or if I need to vent about how long everything is taking or about how other mommies are having babies in a predictable length of time and why didn't we just decide to do this the old-fashioned way, etc.

Oh, and we need to start fundraising. More on that later!

For now, we can just celebrate the fact that the hardest part is done!

All Clear

Hooray! My fingerprints cleared! Our homestudy is done and can be sent off to the adoption agency ASAP!

Waiting on one more reference letter and our dossier can be sent off too!