The waiting is, indeed, the hardest part.

I wish I had a better update for you all, but alas, things are not moving too quickly right now.  They might start moving tomorrow or the next day, maybe, but for today, we’re still waiting.  Our home study isn’t quite done yet, and that’s what we need to move forward.

The timeline is getting to me lately and the reality of how long and involved this process is has really sunk in.  When you first start out and they say “12-18 months” you think, well, that’s not so long.  And then you’ve been in it for a few months and suddenly 12-18 months away from your child seems like far too much.

That is, I think, the tricky thing about adoption.  P4 lives, right now, in an orphanage on the other side of the world.  He or she gets up in the morning, plays with other kids, eats meals, plays with toys, takes naps, falls down, takes steps, learns words, and just generally lives life, all without the family who already loves him or her, even though we’ve never met.  We’ve been spending a lot of time praying for kind nannies and that P4 is well loved and well cared for.  That’s a hard thing for a mama’s heart, because I would rather be the one doing the loving and caring and that’s just not possible right now, so we are hoping that someone is filling that space for us until we get there.

I find myself frequently doing the time translation and thinking “oh, he’s eating breakfast” as I’m going to bed, or “oh, maybe it’s nap time” when I wake up in the middle of the night, or “good night, sweet girl” as I’m waking up.  It’s a hard and weird way to live.  I am very much at the point now where I just want our child home, and I suspect that will only get worse from here.  The littlest hold ups drive me bonkers, especially when it’s my fault.  I forgot to fill out Eden’s medical form which resulted in an afternoon of mad scrambling to get it to her pediatricians office, and I know that’s totally normal, to forget things, but it feels really intense in the moment, awful even, because it feels like it’s directly impacting our timeline (it’s not, really).  I found out the other day that our home study has to go to our adoption agency before we can submit it to Immigration, which is yet another step I didn’t realize we had to take.  It’s probably only a few extra days (if that!), but it might as well be a lifetime to my “come on, let’s get this show on the road” brain.  It’s just been a hard few days, friends.  Reality is kind of biting right now.

So now we’re doing everything we can to be ready to take the next steps as soon as we have our home study in hand, and we wait.  The paperwork for Immigration is filled out and waiting for the word go.  I’m hoping that this post will serve as the universe’s invitation to prove everything I’ve written wrong and everything will start moving at lightening speed.  A girl can hope right?