China adoption

We still get many questions from people regarding "where we are" with our China adoption. Our Adoption Agency recently sent us some updates and in one of the packets, they included this image (shown above). I think this really helps explain where we are with waiting for our adoption. See that long line in the middle? We are somewhere near the front of that. See where it says "Roughly 36 months & growing"? That's us again.

That 36 months was actually about 19 months or so when we got started. We have waited nearly 8 months, but the wait time had probably grown by 10 months during that period. So we are actually farther away than when we started. The good news is that Isaac and Elijah have joined our lives. It is difficult for me to fathom how frustrating this growing wait time would have been had our China daughter been the only thing we were waiting on.

Another thing this chart shows is that once we do get a referral (which will be years from now), things will move very quickly, and we will have very little time before we are in China picking up our daughter.

For now though, things are just creeping along without many updates to share with everyone. One of the most frustrating things is that there are certain things (home study and fingerprints specifically) that need to be renewed each year. We got an email yesterday that said our home study has to be updated in March. This will cost us about $750 for a social worker to drive from Orlando and make sure we are still a nice family. Fingerprinting has to be done in Jacksonville every 18 months and new fees paid. I am especially concerned if our next base is overseas. I don't know how we will continue to keep these things updated if we are thousands of miles away from the U.S.

I will, of course, continue to keep the blog updated. Your prayers for wisdom, timing, and guidance with our China adoption are something we covet. Between this and our seven embryos and Elijah's arrival and Isaac's addition, we have a lot of things to juggle.