18 months

We're sorry that if you've checked our blog in the past 6 months, all you've heard was crickets.

It's just that there hasn't been anything to update and it's been easier to distance ourselves from the adoption world than to agonize over every minute, day, week, month, and year that goes by and we're still not parents.

The good news is that this insanely long wait has given us the chance to tackle a huge project that we knew we'd need to do someday. In July, around the time we decided to change our preference to two kids and knew we'd be waiting even longer for our referral, we started on our dream addition to our house. We're almost finished now and SO glad that we had the chance to do this project before we had kids running around! It will be so nice to bring our kids home to our finished house and their forever home!

I think Christmastime would be a very fun time to receive one's referral so maybe we'll be giving a fun update soon! If not, look for an update in another 6 months which will be 2 years on the waitlist. Surely we won't make it that long, right?

One year on the waitlist

One year ago today we were added to our agency's OFFICIAL WAIT LIST!!! It was an awesome, awesome day! One year later we're still waiting (which we weren't expecting to be) BUT on the other hand, now we're waiting on TWO kids instead of one so it makes sense that our wait would be longer. We're taking it all in stride, with an extra pep in our step today because we are remembering that we're ONE YEAR closer to our kids than we were on June 2, 2010! :) So today is a happy day!

10 months

We're back! And we have two things to announce:
1) We've been on the waitlist 10 months and one week and things are finally starting to look up and we have renewed confidence that our adoption is going to work out in the end! :)

2) We're now waiting on TWO infants! We are very excited to be waiting on our whole family now. We've always wanted to adopt two children and we decided a month ago that it made the most sense to adopt both of them during this adoption process. So hopefully, in the near future, we'll be gazing at the faces of both our babies! WE CAN'T WAIT!

Eight

8 inches of snow?  CHECK
8 months on the waitlist?  CHECK

ONE YEAR

One year ago we decided adoption was the way to build our family. One year ago we decided Ethiopia was the country we wanted to do this through. One year ago TODAY we mailed our first application to adopt. One year ago TODAY we OFFICIALLY began our journey to Baby DuFran.

Can you believe it?! We've been in the adoption process for 1 year now! If this was a traditional pregnancy we'd already be home with a 3 month old but, since it's an adoption pregnancy, we've still got 6 months to go before we're home with our little one! I'm glad Zach and I are so good at delayed gratification- because that's exactly what this is! :) One year ago, when we started filling out our first adoption paperwork I remember being sad thinking, "In one year we won't be any closer to our child. We still won't have a picture or have held them or really even be close to travelling to them." So here we are at that one year mark. Yeah, it stinks that we don't have any of those things yet but it will come so soon! We're getting so close! We have a whole 12 months behind us now out of the 18 month process! That sounds very big to me.

Unfortunately, a good portion of our paperwork, (medicals, reference letters, homestudy, etc) expire after one year so...... we now get to start re-doing paperwork! Hopefully, just as we finish getting everything back up to date we'll be receiving our referral phone call! That will be a good reminder of why this is all worth it! As soon as we see that little face, all of these months of waiting will just fade into the background!

7 months!

Okay, we've been on the waitlist 7 months now! That seems like such a large number to me. I keep thinking maybe we accidentally skipped a month somewhere. But no! We're actually 7 months down- x to go!!! The waitlist times have continued to creep up but it doesn't seem to be bothering me right now! Within mere months we'll have our referral! Even if I have to wait another 3 1/2 months that seems like nothing to me right now in my current state of mind. (I hope I can hold onto this state of mind because it's really fun!) The past 7 months have flown by. I keep waiting for time to slow down but it hasn't yet. I know we just had all kinds of holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years) to distract us but now I can start looking forward to Valentine's Day and before you know it- Referral Day will be here! 7 months, 7 months, 7 months! We're getting so close!