The theme of this adoption: Wait.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

First you wait for your paperwork to be finished. Some of this is in your control and some of it is not.

You wait for your referral when you are matched with your child. :)

You have a few days of euphoria mixed with anxiety as you obsess over EVERY detail of EVERY picture and EVERY note written down about your child.

If you are lucky enough to receive your referral while courts are closed you get to relax (yeah right) in the knowledge that your phone will not be ringing with a court date for, in our case, seven weeks. While courts have been closed we are hoping hoping that our son’s original orphanage was able to collect all of his paperwork and get things in order ready to submit to the courts the day they open.

Back to The Wait and you wonder, “Did our paperwork get submitted yet? Will it happen today, tomorrow...”etc etc

Next step, you wait for the phone to ring again with your court date.

This wait, for those of you crumbling waiting for your referral, I’m sorry to report, that THIS wait is waaaaaay harder. As I look at every photo a bajillion times a day and watch the amazing short video clips we’ve received from other amazing Mamas....I am sad. I’m sad that he is growing and changing and we are missing it. I seriously want to hop a plane NOW.

All last weekend Davis pretended to be flying on a plane to Ethiopia to pick up her baby brother. Even when we grew weary of the game she just flew by herself and would say, “Look Mama! It’s my baby brudder! I went to pick him up all by myself...cuz I’m four years old and I can do that!”

When the phone finally rings with the lovely 817 area code we will receive two dates. One for the date our case will be presented to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, MOWA, and a second date for when we will go before the Ethiopian courts to make our statement of desire to adopt this child. MOWA must rule favorably on our case before moving to step 2 and we only have to be present for this second step.

And then?? Yup, you guessed it, we wait. The wait between passing court and the U.S. Embassy date is approx 2-6 weeks. It all depends on how many families are in the queue. We can either come back home while we wait for our embassy date, or we can stay in-country.

The moments we get down or frustrated or sad, we look at these pictures and video of a BEAUTIFUL BOY and we fall head-over-heels-in-love over and over and over. And we know that once we have him home all of this will fade and none of this waiting will matter one bit.