waiting

I've traded sleeping for lying awake thinking about our little guy. It's really cool to know that somewhere out there is a little boy and we're going to be his parents. If I see an Ethiopian man, I can't help but wonder if he resembles our little guy, and then picture him bringing home his laundry in 20 years. It's fun to daydream about, but scary at the same time. The only part I really worry about is going places with three kids, surely plenty of people have three or more kids and manage just fine, but I already feel like I spend a good amount of time saying, "Please, don't touch that!"

Right now, we're finished with the homestudy visits and we're just waiting for our background clearances to come back from the state. Once those are back (which should be any day) then our social worker will write our homestudy. After the homestudy is written, we submit our dossier to the Ethiopian government and then we wait for our federal background checks. After all that, we wait for our agency to call us with a referral.

I've had a few people ask if we have a choice when it comes to our referral, and the answer is no. The agency representative in Ethiopia reads the dossier and homestudy and then matches us to a child. Then the agency calls us with the information about the child (age, background, medical reports, and a photo). But we're still a long way away from this part and are still in paperwork limbo.