Five Months and Waiting ...

We've now been on the waiting list five months and no word. Our social worker is in Africa until February, and she told us before she left that it would be doubtful that we would hear anything while she was gone. A few families have announced referrals on the chat group, but they were all for older children; none of the referrals affected our place on the waiting list.

The family who accepted the referral for the little guy we were contacted about got a court date in early February with an anticipated travel date in mid-March. I am really happy things are going so quickly for them, but it is hard to see their progress while we still wait hoping for a referral.

I realized today that we will probably need to renew our passports. They expire in August, and a website I read today about obtaining visas for travel to Ethiopia said that the passport has to be good for six months in order to obtain the visa. Don't think we'll make that deadline! I just hope that we are able to renew our passports several months before they expire or we might be running into trouble.

A Little Sad

We called our caseworker this morning and told her we were going to have to pass on the referral. Who knows whether or not we made the right choice, but Ben is really wanting an infant as young as possible. I guess I'm superstitious, but I felt like the fact that the referral was coming on Ethiopian Christmas Day and the baby's birthday of 08/08/08 was pretty cool. We have seven birthdays right now falling between July 1st and August 20th, and I had always been a little disappointed Bailey's birthday was 08/07/88 instead of 08/08/88. It was sad and a little scary to turn down the referral. With our history of programs shutting down right after we adopt, I'm always afraid of the risk of Ethiopian adoptions ending or running into problems. The program seems to be stable right now, but there's always rumors flying around ...

Top Three!

We received a call today from our caseworker telling us they have a little boy about seventeen months old they want us to consider. She went on to tell us that there are some potential health issues and his age is approximate. He could be older. I was all ready to accept the referral tentatively so that we could look over his complete medical records and history, but Ben is very much wanting to wait for a referral of a child under a year old. We have until tomorrow morning to make a final decision, but right now I think we are going to have to decline.

She did go on to tell us that with the flurry of referrals from last week, there are now only *two* families ahead of us open to boys 0-12 months! That's very exciting! She's not expecting us to hear anything this month, but hopefully it will be very soon!