Thinking...

I have been thinking alot lately about how much my life has changed in the past 12 months. A year ago McGyver and I made the decision to adopt. 6 months ago our paperwork was logged in in China and I was anxiously anticipating a December gift of Dreamsicle's referral. December is now over and I think about how long the past 6 months has seemed in many ways, and dread the next 5-6 months that lay ahead of us. We received word today from our adoption agency that referrals for January will be through April 20th. I really should know by now that the information floating around on the message boards really is nothing more than rumours. Remember when you were young and played telephone? Or how when you were a teenager your best friend would tell you a secret, swear you to secrecy, you would tell someone else and add a little something to the story and swear that person to secrecy who would tell someone else with another lil' something added when they told the next person and before you knew it what started out as Julie telling Ashley that she made out with Bobby making its way back to Julie that she is now pregnant with twins from her best friends fathers second cousin on her mothers side? Well the message boards are alot like that. They have all been reporting that this next batch of referrals was sure to include at least through May 10th and that the CCAA would certainly send out another batch of referrals at the end of January as well because that is what they did for the past couple of years. Welllllllll, the word we got directly from our adoption agency is that the referrals will be through April 20-long way from May 10th, huh? And the thing that I think people seem to forget is that nothing is the same as it has been. This time last year people were still getting their referrals 6 months after being logged in. Not the case anymore. Our adoption agency has changed its expected wait time from 6 months to 8-9 months but honestly I think that the people in the late May/June/July cycle will be more inclined to see an 11-12 month wait. If the people who will be receiving their referrals next week only consist of those logged in through April 20th just doing some simple math will show that we have a good 5-6 more months of waiting on our hands. Some days I think that as long as I stay busy the time should go by fairly quickly but there are times, especially in the early morning hours when I am the only one awake, that I sit on my couch with my cup of coffee and get misty eyed. I think about the fact that this time of day would be mine and Dreamsicle's to share together, just the two of us. She is alive, she is out there, somewhere, waiting-while I sit half a world away and wait as well...