Explaining the ticker

So, I thought since I found this great ticker that counts down the days we have been waiting for our daughter I would explain what we are doing. Last March Jeremy and I were in the process of adopting through our local foster care system when we decided that we really wanted to do another International adoption. So, after much information gathering we found a great agency and decided to adopt from Ethiopia (ET). We started gathering all of the paperwork and completed our home study and we were on our way to adopt siblings under 3 years of age (there has to be 1 year between Mia and the oldest sibling). Of course at the time we were hoping for twins, but we were excited for any age combination our agency would match us with. On August 31, 2007 we were OFFICIALLY waiting. As the days, then weeks, then months creeped by we were so busy with Mia it did not seem to be that long of a wait.

Now, here I want to tell you a little bit about the ET adoption process. It starts with your months of waiting and then once you get a referral you can jump up and down! About 8 weeks after the referral you are assigned a court date, and once you make it through court you are issued a birth certificate. At the time you make it through court your child is officially yours. Usually about 3-4 weeks after the referral you travel to ET for 1 week to pick up your child. So that is the short version of the process, the catch though is the courts close. From the middle of August until the beginning of October the courts in ET close. Since a judge will not be able to hear the court case (because they are closed) our Agency stops giving out referrals around the middle of June. This is basically so you do not get a referral and then have to wait months and months for the courts to reopen before you can travel. It makes a lot of sense, but there is also a lot of anxiety related to it. When we started this process we were told it would be about a 5-7 month wait for a referral which would have put us receiving a referral between the end of January and the end of March. Well, in the meantime the wait has grown...6-9 months. So, 9 months will be May 31, 2008, which is still prior to the cutoff date, but there is still lots of anxiety that we will not make it before then. Back to my story...

So, in December we were still waiting for our sibling referral when I noticed that there were not very many sibling referral being given out and the wait for siblings was getting longer and longer. Jeremy and I decided that it was best for our family to go ahead and request an infant between 0 and 12 months. When we made this decision I told Jeremy it was important for me to know the sex of our new baby, so I asked him if he wanted a boy or a girl. He hemmed and hawed and said he wanted a boy, I replied that I wanted a girl, so as of Februaury 25th we are waiting for an infant girl between the ages of 0-12 months! I wanted to determine the sex so we could pick a name and start getting the nursery together. So, her name will be Sophia Leigh, named after my sister (the Leigh part) and we are still hoping to receive a referral prior to the cutoff date.

This is the shortest version of the story, but you are now caught up and I can begin my daily/weekly posting of the rest of our journey.