Where we are in line...

Each week our agency updates a blog that they run with info about referrals for that week and cultural things of interest. Today the blog was updated to say that they got six more referrals this week. They also went on to say that there are ten 2006 families remaining to be matched. It is unusual for them to give out this much info. If you have been reading our blog you know that we have been anxiously trying to figure out roughly how many people are in front of us since they won't tell anyone. Knowing that there are ten families left from last year waiting, and the fact that we know there are three 2007 families in front of us (thanks to our social worker telling us) we know with almost certainty that we are family number fourteen!

We sort of had our hopes up that we would get a wonderful Christmas referral, but it isn't likely given that we are family fourteen. This month our agency got eleven referrals total and that is as many as they have ever gotten in one month as far as I know. I do hope that we will get a referral no later than February though.

Our agency gets files for children with special needs separate from the regular referrals as well. Families have to ask to be shown these files if they are interested in considering a special needs child. The special needs can vary from very mild and manageable to very severe and life shortening. We have decided to review the mild special needs files. We reviewed one this week for a little boy. Our agency matches these children with families that show interest based on our home study approval dates. We are likely still too far back in line at this point to get matched, but you never know. Often the very mild special needs children are pretty easy to match with a family high up on the list. This little boy is the third special needs child we have requested since August and we obviously have not been match yet.

Jack's new mattresses are being delivered any minute now. His nap today was his last time in his old room/nursery. I (Em) thought I was fine with him moving to his big boy room, but I'm actually really sad that he is getting so big so quickly! Jack, on the other hand, is super excited to sleep in his new bed tonight. He told me today that he has to sleep in his new room so the new baby can use the baby bed.

Thanks for reading our rambling thoughts. It means a lot to us that you are interested enough to follow our adventure.

Gestation of an Elephant

It has now been over a year officially since we started the adoption process and it is beginning to feel a bit like the gestation of an elephant. We knew when we started the process that it would take a long time, but some days make it seem longer than others. Now that we think we are getting close to referral we have started asking each other from time to time what we think our baby is doing in Korea right now. Since babies have to be five months old in order to be matched we believe that our baby has already been born. We hate the idea that they are half a world away and that we don't know them, yet lots of growing and changing is already going on with them. We find it sad to think of the things that we will miss from this baby's first year of life that we were fortunate enough to witness with Jack. On a lighter note, we are crossing our fingers that they are a good sleeper when we get them, as that was something Jack was not in his first year of life!

In the month of October our agency ended up getting three referrals. This month so far they have received five. We are now number three on the unofficial agency list online. As I said before, we have reason to believe that there may be three to four times that number actually waiting. If so, it may not be that much longer. However, if there are a couple of slow months around the holidays we could be looking at January or February. The not knowing is what is driving us nuts!

We have been painting Jack's new room so that we can hopefully get him moved in to it before Christmas. His furniture has arrived and is taking up most of the garage at the moment. We are painting his room lime green with navy stripes to match the navy colored furniture he is getting. It seemed like a good idea before we started painting. Now we just want it to be done.

We got back last week from a week and a half in Florida. We went to Key West and Disney World. Jack adored Disney and it was really fun to watch him witness the spectacle that is Disney. Hopefully it will be our last family holiday as a family of three!

A shout out to the MacDougall's for leaving us our first comment on here! Cheers :)

October so far

Well, in addition to the weather finally cooling off, so have referrals (baby matches with families) this month from our agency. So far there have not been any that I know of. Last month our agency received ten referrals which is really good. There are a lot of holidays in Korea in October so apparently they don't get much done. When I went back and looked at the archived newsletters from our agency they didn't get many referrals last October either. However, November is usually a big month for them to start rolling in again. Fingers crossed...

I just got done doing some more immigration paperwork which totally stresses me out. We had to fill out a petition to adopt an orphan with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service when we started the process for China. The paperwork is country specific so we now have to go back and get the paperwork changed to say South Korea. I will drop that off at our agency tomorrow morning for them to mail along with our updated home study. I will hold my breath that that goes through smoothly. I thought that once Dave had his green card that we'd be done with Immigration! Ha Ha

Right now we are listed as the number six family on our agency's "unofficial" list on the bulletin board for waiting families. Families can subscribe to the online board to chat and list themselves as waiting along with their approval date. We have reason to believe from our social worker that there are probably three to four times that number actually in line in front of us (since not everyone that is waiting chooses to join the online board to chat). Either way, we are certainly getting there faster than we ever thought we would. With another big month like September we may have a referral in a few months!!! We got excited and bought Jack big boy furniture for his room so that the crib will be ready for the baby early next year...just in case :)

Timeline Update

So, we have been doing a lot of reading online and chatting with other families that are in line with us for Korea and we came to find out that we were not as far back in the line as we thought. You see, our adoption agency will not tell anyone where they are exactly in terms of the number of people remaining in front so that clients do not phone up if they find out that a family behind them gets matched before they do. However, typically the agency does do matches in order of home study approval dates. Therefore, one's place in line is a big deal. Anyway...it kept coming up in my conversations that there couldn't be that many people left in front of us. So, I phoned our social worker to ask if I was correct and if we should be expecting a referral sooner rather than later. After some dancing around the issue, and me pushing it, she finally said that it looked like our referral would likely come sometime between January and March of 2008. This is great news as we were originally told it would likely be the end of 2008. Obviously, things can change, so we'll keep our fingers crossed. The process has really been stressful in terms of planning things in our life. At least when we were pregnant with Jack we had a good idea within a week or two of when the pregnancy would be done!

Here we go...

Well, we've been meaning to get a blog/web page up and running now for several months. Finally, I (Emily) sat down and did it. I should be reading/reviewing stuff for my new part time job at the NCAA, but I've been procrastinating all month so what's another afternoon!

Dave and I wanted to start a blog so that those of you who are interested can follow along on our journey through the world of adoption. We started the process to adopt in October of 2006. We attended our agency's general adoption meeting. We left feeling like this was what we should do. We also felt really drawn to the South Korean program for lots of reasons. The children who come from Korea are generally really healthy, well cared for in foster families, and fairly young when arriving in the US. The first roadblock to Korea came when we filled out our application and were then told that the Korea program was temporarily closed to new applicants. You see, Korea only accepts applications from US agencies when they believe they'll be able to place babies during a certain time frame. As a result we decided to pursue the adoption program through China. We spent from November-March paper chasing for our dossier (required paperwork) for our China application. We also had to have a home study done with a social worker to prove that we are 'fit parents' as well as have physical exams, background checks, and references completed. We also had the joy of revisiting the immigration office again :(

So, we got all of our China paperwork done and mailed off and then a huge slowdown hit. You know when you go to the grocery store and you look at all the check out lanes to decide which is shortest and then it ends up taking the longest... well, China was the shortest line when we got in and then within three months of being officially in line the program came to a screeching halt. Dave and I, mostly me, started to panic. They started projecting wait times to increase to 3-4 years from application. I couldn't deal with that kind of a time frame. We started looking into other options and then out of the blue our social worker called us to see if we were still interested in the Korea program. Of course we said yes! They re-opened the program for one month for a new intake of applicants. Since we had done so much paperwork for China we only had to complete one additional home study visit with our social worker and one more background check at the city-county building in downtown Indianapolis. We did that within three days of being accepted into the Korea program. We have officially been in line for Korea since August 1, 2007. That is what is called our home study to Korea (HSTK) date. That is the date Korea uses when deciding who gets matched with the next babies available for adoption.

When we signed on with the Korea program our agency told us to expect a 6-18 month wait. Having of course done an obnoxious amount of research we sort of figured it would take closer to 12 months before we would get our referral (notice of being matched). However, since August the program has been moving really quickly. If things continue at the current rate for the next 4-5 months we could be referred a baby in early 2008!

A lot of people ask us if we get to choose the gender. We do not. Our agency will not allow us to specify gender, so we'll just be surprised when the social worker calls us to tell us we have a child. We'll be thrilled with either a boy or girl. There is a better chance that we'll get a boy as there are generally more boys available for adoption from Korea.

Now that it looks like it will be early next year that we will get our referral we have started explaining to Jack that he is going to be a big brother. He seems to understand the concept and does talk about it from time to time. He tells us that he will be a nice big brother and that he will share his toys. My hope is that we will be lucky enough to get matched to a child that is as sweet and wonderful as Jack.