five words

Five words: one year on the waitlist.

Five words we didn't really expect to be writing here... hoped not to be writing. But that is what today marks. One year on the waitlist.

The good news is that things are moving. Slowly, but they are moving, and we are starting to feel like maybe we have an ever-so-slightly better idea of what to expect in terms of timeframes for the next stages of our adoption process.

The bad news is that those timeframes are a lot (A LOT) longer than we ever anticipated. As in you will probably be reading about our 13 and 14 (but we hope not 15) month anniversaries on the waitlist and keeping your fingers crossed with us in the new year (yes, the 2012 new year) for a successful court date. Not exactly what we had planned, but so it goes.

It sometimes amazes me how crazy and emotional (and frustrated and drained) we often got during Simon's adoption process (just look through guzo posts from the first half of 2008 - I haven't counted, but I'm pretty sure there are a zillion references to the emotional roller coaster ride that is international adoption). His whole process from start to finish was about 11 months. How ridiculously short that seems in hindsight! We are now about a year and a half into this adoption process - a year of that just waiting for a referral. With probably a good 7 or 8 months or so to go. And yet somehow we actually feel less crazy this time around. Guess there is something to be said for experience, huh?

So that's it.

One year waiting.

And now we wait some more.