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 :)