Twenty Nine Months

I’m not quite sure what happened to month twenty-eight, I guess we have just been super busy and not much has been going on as far as our adoption goes.  We are still waiting for our home study to finally be finished being updated, but we did go to Seattle and get our fingerprints done for the USCIS update.  We also did end up getting a letter from them telling us that we have 45 days to submit our updated home study in order to have our immigration paperwork renewed.  I don’t think this will be a problem since we are just a week or two away now from having it all completed.  We really like our new social worker.  She is super nice.  We had a really nice visit with her last month and look forward to finalizing our adoption with her when the time comes.  

We haven’t really heard much about anything that’s going on with referrals other than that they seem to be moving really slow.  I heard today that they are still working on referrals from the 3rd quarter of 2008.  There was one new referral that I heard of since my last update and they waited almost 31 months.  There are several more families that I know of that have been waiting just over 31 months.  I am still hoping that our time will be very soon, unfortunately though it is looking more and more like it will be closer to our 3 year mark.  Because of this we have decided to go ahead and use Jason’s vacation days instead of holding onto them just in case we have to travel to the Philippines this year.  We have been told by our agency that the wait time to travel after referral is increasing to a minimum of 5 months where it use to be 3 months.  This means we would have to get our referral by the end of this month or beginning of next month to have a chance of traveling this year which does not look likely.  We aren’t planning anything big for this summer, just a few family campouts and some backpacking for just me and Jason.

I have to say that lately this wait has really started to take its toll on me.  I am the type of person that likes to plan everything and know everything ahead of time, so having no idea when we might even possibly get a referral is driving me absolutely crazy.  I am trying so hard to be patient, but I just want to see my baby’s face and know who they are and when I will get to hold them in my arms.  There are days that it doesn’t feel real to me anymore because it has been so long.  I have been getting the question quite a bit from friends and neighbors about if we are still adopting.  I guess it’s my fault since I optimistically told everyone that we should have our referral by this spring or summer.  It really stinks to think that it might be another year until we have our child home with us.  I’m just thankful that we are going to have a really busy summer to help keep our minds off of it.  Hopefully we will continue to stay that busy for as long as it will take to finally get our referral.  All I can do is just trust that the Lord knows what He is doing and keep pressing forward with faith that all will work out for the best and our little one will one day join us when the time is finally right.