April 10, 2006

Well, we were not able to get our home study submitted this week like I had hoped we would. I have to say that this process is giving patience a whole new meaning. I know though that when the time is right everything will fall into place. Our agency received 26 new referrals a couple of weeks ago for the waiting child program. There were 13 girls and 13 boys. They are in the process of translation and soon our agency will be calling families on the interested families list for the waiting child program. Our application was submitted and approved very recently so we are doubtful that we will get a call in this group. Who knows though. I am working really hard at not obsessing over it. When the time is right... I do know that a couple of families have already received calls. One family received a call about a little girl 4 1/2 years old and another family a little boy 2 1/2 years old. I was so happy for those families - the joy with which they announced their acceptance of referrals was so evident even via email. Glen and I are more and more certain that our sweet Mackenzie will be a waiting child. These precious children have special needs. Most of them are correctable. In China they have no hope for a future. Here with some medical care they have hope for a normal life with a family that loves them. We are of course not sure what will transpire over the next several months, but we are comfortable with our choice to open our application to consider these special needs children as well as our decision to request a child 0-4 years instead of the "typical" 0-2 years or AYAP (as young as possible). Glen and I have talked so much about the situation and really gone over and over the pros and cons. We are not monetarily rich by any stretch of the imagination. We do have exceptional healthcare benefits though and more importantly a stable and loving family. We are blessed to also have extended family that supports and is excited for our adoption. We are eager to meet our daughter and are amazed that we are already so in love with a little girl whose face we don't know and who is 1/2 way around the world. It is fun for us to speculate as to whether she (Mackenzie) will be 10 months old at referral or whether she will be 3 years old at referral. We have talked about what she will look like and what kind of personality she will have. In any case we are sure she will be the perfect little "princess" for our family. After submitting our application for the waiting child program we found out that there is the possibility that we would get a referral sooner than through the normal process. We also found out that our application stays in line for the normal China referral process until we accept a referral from the waiting child program. If we do not accept a referral from the waiting child program we will still receive a referral from the normal program in the normal timeframe.Lots of boring facts I know, but they are important to our process and I wanted to make sure that they were included. We continue to pray every night for our precious daughter. Sweet Mackenzie - we are coming. Every day we are a little bit closer to that coveted "gotcha" day! Can't wait to meet you princess! ~T