So...here's a year's worth of update: In January A turned TWO! The terrific trying twos I call it. Can I just say that I LOVE two! Sure, it is an extraordinarily emotional age with LOTS of meltdowns, melodrama and mayhem, but so much fun. A has learned her letters, phonetic sounds, and numbers. She is bursting with personality and loves to make jokes and just be on the go all the time. She is strong-willed and tests everything.everything.everything. It has been a joy to watch her personality develop and see the little person that she is. She is also tender-hearted and will ask if you're ok if you look sad and bring you a band-aid. I just love me two year old!
Why haven't there been any pictures? I'm glad you asked. We had a lovely summer vacation this year to the beach again. Everything was wonderful EXCEPT my camera completely died. Kapootz. I do, however, have some fuzzy ill-timed pictures I was able to snap on our cell phones (no people...not smart phones...make calls and texts only stupid phones). So I am now saving every spare allowance penny I can scrap (did I mention we're saving for a second adoption) to try and buy a new camera. Until then we're stuck with fuzzy ill-timed phone pics. We did get our family pics taken again at the beach. They are lovely so I'll post one of those. Speaking of family pics...imagine an already high strung child who gets more hyper the more tired she gets, past bedtime, no nap, no dinner yet. Oh yeah, we know how to time our photo sessions just right. Insert sarcastic laughter here.
Now, back to the adoption. One year on the waitlist. What exactly does that mean? If you notice, there haven't been updated waitlist #s in a few months. That's not because I have forgotten to post them, it is because there are none. Things have slowed down so much that our agency stopped issuing waitlist numbers. It is pretty depressing to see it only move one spot every couple months, even when you go into this knowing it will be years, so I understand. We still get updates when there are referrals with enough information to have an idea of how much we've moved on the list, just no hard numbers to report anymore.
What does that mean for our timeframe? We were expecting to have to wait two to three years on a waitlist and it is now looking like it will be more like four years. Yep, four years. We were not quite prepared for that when we started this. We had not expected A to have to be an only child for that long. This would be UNBEARABLE if this was our first adoption. It's hard now, but our expectations are different this time around. This time, we have seen God's faithfulness in putting our family together. We have confidence in knowing that His timing is perfect. Our babies are not ready for us yet. Our hearts have more preparing to do. That is a scary thought, but I know it is true. God is preparing us for our future children as we wait for them to need us. At this moment, we trust in that. God's plans will not be late by a single day.
-amory
I just started looking into why our adoption of an Ethiopian child was also not moving in the forward direction and I came across this. My wife and I are #142 on the waiting list. We have been on the waiting list only since Sept., but we have not moved a spot yet. Our situation seems to be similar in that we have have a 5 year old son....6 in January. He is not adopted, but we can't have more children of our own and we want and he wants another sibling(preferably a brother, but a sister will be good too according to him). We can feel your frustration, but we are optimistic, also, and believe God has a plan for us. I think for us, the frustration comes from being told when we started this journey that it would be 18-24 months and now it's looking more like 36-48 months. It's hard as we are not getting any younger and neither is our son.....but, we are very hopeful that this is the plan for us and things happen for a reason.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to reading more posts.
P.S. you have a beautiful daughter.