**Four Weeks and one day of waiting** November 17, 2009

No news yet.  As of Thursday our orphanage will have had our fully translated Dossier for two weeks.  I am planning on emailing our country specialist on Thursday to see if she thinking it will be days, week(s), a month, or several months before we have the orphanage “approval” she spoke about in her last email.  I thought we may have had it by two weeks since they have had our homestudy for a while already.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that no news is good news.

I’m sure they are busy with all the children and other couples arriving to adopt.  Congrats again to Melissa and Ryan who will be traveling this Saturday to finally meet their new baby.           I’m so happy for them!  Hearing about others getting their referrals and traveling makes me smile as I know families are being created and it reminds me that our day will arrive someday too.     :)  

**THREE Weeks of waiting** November 9, 2009

We received an email from our country specialist last Thursday morning  11/5/09.

This is part of it.   The rumor is that they believe we may get our referral quickly  (a long story).  So I am really hoping to get a call this week or next.  I haven’t heard anything more yet. 

Dear Amy and Jason,

I just received word from our rep in Colombia,  that your dossier has been submitted to your orphanage! Now we will wait for their review of it, and approval. When I hear about “approval.” I will call you. Then we’ll wait for referral, timeline I can’t even guess at this time. When you get the approval, though, I will ask for her best guess, and we’ll see what she says. Each adoption house has its own methods, and then it depends how many children they happen to have ready for referral, but beyond that we just need to be patient and see how it falls. But this is movement and good news!

 

 

**It’s beginning to look like a babies room~ November 3, 2009

**Two weeks of waiting** November 2, 2009

Two weeks has gone by quickly! It is funny to think we have only been “officially waiting” two weeks when we have been in the adoption process for 1 year and 8 months, and have been wanting to start a family for 2+ years prior to that.  To think that all that time doesn’t count when someone asks how long we are waiting it amazing.  Does it make our family/experience better if we are “officially waiting” for years to start our family? 

Our agency sent our Dossier to Colombia on 10/15.  We were told it takes about 3 -4  days for the mail to get to our Translator in Colombia.  So I am guesstimating they received it on 10/19.  Translating normally takes 2-3 weeks, we were told ours may be shorter as they already had our Home-study translated.  Being overly anxious and trying to picture every step our of process, even the steps we are not a part of, I am guessing our Dossier could go to our Orphanage as early as today but should be there no later than next Monday 11/9.

I have no idea how long the orphanage reviews the dossier.  I do know that they send us a letter when they have completed reviewing it as a Welcome, and I have heard they give you a new wait time in that letter. 

The fastest I have heard someone got an infant referral after submitting their dossier to a private adoption home in Colombia was Two weeks and in the last 6 months.  It is unknown if that couple requested any special needs or if that was a special circumstance.  Most likely it was. 

I have met one nice woman who was told the wait was 2-3 years in her letter from the orphanage after being told the wait time was 9-12 months.  Luckily it looks like the wait time for her won’t be much over 12 months, I am keeping my fingers crossed for her.

I am hoping the rumor we heard that we may have a very short wait time is correct. 

I started a countdown on my desk calendar so I would know exactly how many days our dossier has been in Colombia.  If we do not have our referral by the end of the year I’m thinking it’s probably safe to assume we are back to the standard wait time we were given on 12-18 months. 

I would love to have our referral soon, for obvious reasons but am trying to be patient.

Now, back to staring at my phone wishing it would ring… with a 651 area code that isn’t work related.