The excitement of knowing you have a child.

For those of you out there in internet land that know me, you'll know that I am a pretty reserved person. I don't tend to get overly emotional about much. Yet I find myself very emotional about knowing that I have a daughter out there. I want to know where she is, where she is from and above all else when I get to meet her. The pictures I have of her are posted on my desk at home, on my computer at home, my computer at work, on my ipod, and just about everywhere else I can think of. I guess you could say that I have the baby bug.

Tonight Kate and I were sitting on the couch searching the web for all thing Ethiopia. This is a completely normal thing to do when you know that your child is half way around the world. At least I think it's completely normal. Having said all that I thought of nothing other than google maps. I thought wouldn't it be cool if I could see the area where she is from. Wouldn't that be amazing. Wouldn't you know it, thanks to those smart guys at google I was able to find the region where Asha (that's her new name) is from. I'm not really sure how close we are to really knowing where she is from but I do know that she is from the Hosaina region in Ethiopia. I've included a link if you want to check it out. I was encouraged to see that the town has track, it's made of dirt but that's good enough for me. Well that's enough for now. Follow the link to see the area Asha is from.

Hosaini Ethiopia:

We got our referral!!!!

So I am going to beat Kate to the Blog. We got our referral yesterday morning and we are so excited. I don't have much to say other than Kate and I are very very excited!!! We'll post more pictures when we get them. I can't believe how awesome it is to be officially a Dad. I am sure that I will have more updates in the coming hours and days.

Okay, Okay, Okay!!

So, Matt's been bugging me about posting to the blog and I figured I'd better take a couple of minutes to do so. As you read in Matt's recent post, we are still waiting for our referral and it seems that the wait will extend beyond 6 months for sure! I say that because today we have been waiting 6 months. I guess part of the reason I haven't been writing much is because I was pretty sad about everything and felt that the best thing I could do was to keep myself busy with other things. It seems that the more I get involved in checking the yahoo groups, checking emails and so forth, the more anxious I get about the referral and the fact that it's not happening. I absolutely trust that things will work out for the best and that when the time comes, we will receive the perfect children for our family- it's just hard waiting. There's no nice way to say it- I'm sick of waiting! I was also a bit bothered because I'd never heard of a sibling referral taking up to 12 months and was somewhat blindsided by that communication. After talking with my agency, I felt a bit better because they aren't actually saying we will wait that long, just that it's a worst case scenario kind of thing. I was told that we would "probably" get a referral in the spring.

Hmmmm... On the positive side, it gives us more time to save more for travel and to do whatever else we must to get ready for the big change. Matt said last night "we're getting closer- a lot closer than we were 7 years ago!"... that's so true. We wanted to start our family back in 2000... so everyday we are MUCH closer.

:)

A long wait than expected....Maybe

Well, our wait for our two children may be longer than expected. We thought it would be no longer than 6 months for our referral. It seems that because of the age children that we requested it may take us a bit longer. The agency says that it could be up to 12 months. When Kate told me that it just broke my heart. I am so ready to be a dad and I know that Kate is very ready to be a mom. We are both ready to be parents...or at least we think we are.

It's been a hard 24 hours considering that it may be another 6 months. Kate and I talked about it today and we do and don't want to change our requirements for our adoption. If we were willing to take an older child it would more than likely expedite the process. It's such a hard call. We're caught between a rock and a hard place. We want our kids so badly but we feel like that we should stick to our request for the ages that we put in for.

I could go on but I won't. I think it's important to just note the way that I feel and what we are going through as a couple as we wait for our adoptions to go through. It's such a long and hard process. I was telling Kate today that I will surely cry the first time that my kids fall asleep laying on my chest while I am sitting on the couch. I can't wait for that moment. It can't come soon enough. Until next time.

Sick and Tired and Waiting

Well we made it throgh the week and we didn't get our referral. I fell ill all week and all I could think about was trying to feel better. Kate on the other hand was checking the web on a regular basis in hopes that our referral would be awaiting in her gmail account. We both know that we will get the phone call first and then we will get the email but none the less we are waiting. I wish we just knew when we would get the referral. Sort of a pre-referral time. It would give us a time we could plan to have our lives as parents will begin. It is so hard to just be there waiting, sitting, hoping and praying for the word that you are officially going to be parents. I know that time will come soon enough but the longer we wait the harder it gets. I say this for both Kate and I, we just can't wait to be parents.

Waiting for our Referral

Waiting for our referral has seemed like an eternity and it only seems to be getting longer. We've been waiting for over five and a half months. Rumor has it that the people at our agency haven't ever had people wait longer than 6 months when waiting for their referral. Our luck would be that we will be the first exception to that rule. Anyway, all in Gods timing.

Lately I have been thinking about what fatherhood will look like. I am sure it will be a total life changer if you know what I mean. I am really excited about the entire process. I've thought about everything from soccer practice, the kids first day of school, the kids getting their first "booboos". Just tonight Kate and I were thinking about how Nikka, our dog, is going to react to the kids. We both decided that Nikka will probably be eating any piece of food that the kids don't eat. I am very much looking forward to parenthood and all that it entails. I am sure that I will make some mistakes but I think that's to be expected. All parents do make mistakes.

As each day goes by I keep thinking that we will be getting our referral today. I hope each day that we get our referral. I know Kate is very anxious as well. Anyway, soon enough, soon enough.

Another Friday, finally here...

Well, it's Friday and the hectic pace has finally caught up with me. I'm tired and feeling a bit sick. Everyone in the office has some kind of yucky cold and though I've been trying to fight it by going to bed early and drinking lots of water, I guess the stress of commuting over 2 hours a day is getting to me. I only have two days left here and hope I can push through and finish. I'm definitely going to take it easy this weekend and enjoy being home. I've really enjoyed myself at this job, though, and I'm going to miss pieces of it.. just not waking up at 5:30 and leaving by 6:45 to get here at 8...:)

So what's next for me? Nesting, nesting, nesting. When I'm finished nesting, I'll reconsider and see where we are with the adoption process. We hope to hear something about our kids by March sometime, but things can and do happen and we have to be prepared for it to extend past that. The other news is is that the place I'm contracting for has asked me to come back sometime to help with some auditing- a few days here and there- so I'll definitely consider that if I get too bored being at home, which is what usually happens after a couple of weeks!

Matt and I have a lot of little errands to run this weekend, but I'm happy that we have a few social gatherings as well. I have bookclub tomorrow, and we're going on a tour of the Brown Palace Hotel in downtown Denver. Matt's going to meet with his brother for lunch and then we'll reconvene and go shopping for a new dryer. Oh yes, we discovered that our dryer does not heat up any longer, unbeknownst to us. I tried to dry some clothes and the machine just kept running and running and nothing ever dries. It's a bummer, because it was one of the things I was most looking forward to when we moved back in. At our apartment, we had to use the coin operated washers and dryers in the dank basement with loads and loads of quarters. I swear, I spent almost 20 bucks a week in that place!

Sunday night is the presentation for Ethiopia Reads www.ethiopiareads.org, a non profit literacy program that helps make books available for kids in Ethiopia. It's pretty cool, and we hope to buy a few books for our kiddos and have them signed by the author, who will be there to show slideshow presentation. It's also great because these events give us the opportunity to meet with other families in the Denver area who have or are in process of adopting from Ethiopia. It's quite a nice sized group, and all of the people are really, really nice. For me, it's really encouraging to see all the kids who are home and how well they are doing, how happy they are and how much they seem to be thriving.

That's the news from here.. until next time!