If you are wondering why no posts lately…

Well, to be honest, there is not much to write about. Don’t get me wrong, Sam and I are enjoying life, but I don’t think most readers care about what we have been up to, but rather, where are things at with our adoption. Well…they are the same place they were 6.5 months ago. Still waiting.

So let me talk about the ‘waiting’ period a little bit. It wasn’t not hard for me, at all, up until month 5. At month 5 we were smack dab in the middle of the average, so I think at that point I started to have expectations. When you have expectations they don’t come to fruition, it is disappointing. Regardless of what the expectation is. It is a constant wanting for something, and being let down. Every day when the clock strikes 4:30, I figure today won’t be the day.

If you know me, you also know that I am also a planner. So this whole waiting thing, doesn’t really mesh with my personality or my ability to plan. So this adds a whole other element that is equally frustrating. For instance, Sam and I have been saving as much of our PTO as possible for our adoption. Lucky for me, my company will allow me to carry over 80 hours of PTO if it is not used before the end of the year. Unfortunately for Sam, his company does not allow to carry over his PTO and he has banked over 100 hours of PTO. If we don’t travel to Ethiopia yet this year, then what is unused is just lost.

Another ‘planning’ snafu that we ran into is we have been putting money into a Flex Spending Health Savings Account with the idea that our kids will be home by Christmas. Well that just isn’t going to happen. We need to spend the money in this account otherwise it is forfeited. I originally thought, not a problem, we can stock up on diapers and formula. Well, come to find out neither will qualify. We need to figure out what we are going to spend this money on. If you have ideas, please let me know. *sigh*

The last planning issue that we are running into is I am finishing up courses for my MBA. After my current course, I only have 3 courses left. Yeaahhh for me, although this is a long time in the making (6 years). The challenge is when to schedule my classes when we don’t know when we will be traveling. Ideally, I would like to have them all done before we have the kids’ home, but we don’t know when that will be. *uhhggg*

So with all of this bubbling up, I pressed our agency yesterday for some answers. The first response I received was a bit generic. I understand the agency doesn’t have all the answers either, but I still wasn’t satisfied with her response so I pushed harder. I did feel better after their second response. Here is a summary of what we were advised.

SOS EE matches the appropriate child to the appropriate families as they see fit. Part of this decision is based on the information we provided with our request letter to the Board of SOS EE, what we are approved for in our home study, and the children who have been determined fit for adoption at Toukoul and other factors. During the court closure (they are scheduled to re-open on Sept. 30th) referrals slow down because there is no room for children to move from the regional centers to Toukoul in Addis because families are not being granted custody travel to bring their children home, which opens up space for another child to move into. Dove did receive a few referrals in the first part of the court closure.

There are no families who are in their 8th month of waiting for a referral who are working with Dove and historically they have only had one family who waited 9 months. Since they don’t know exactly when we’ll be matched they can’t estimate when we’ll travel for court but the earliest would be December.

So I just did a lot of writing with not a lot of information to report. I am still hopeful, even though some days are hard, that our referral will come soon. I know when we have our referral, the time we spent waiting will just melt away.

Some people ask us a lot, ‘any news yet?’ While this doesn’t bother me as a I know people are just genuinely excited for us, but honestly, if we have news, you will know. What does bother me is when people say “just try to keep yourself busy.” Clearly if that is your advice, you don’t know us. Sam and I are busy busy busy people. I am honestly looking forward to our social calendar slowing down once we have kids.