An infant girl referral was given out today to our DTE buddy, Kara Z! How exciting for her! This makes us really #1 on our "unofficial" list (and not tied for #1, either). I really am hoping our call will come in the next few days. But as we know well, with international adoption, nothing is certain.

Ouch! That's the word to explain what's coming up for Mark and me. It's time for shots. Since we went to China, we are up-to-date on some of the recommended immunizations, but there's more to look forward to for Ethiopia.

Here's a list of what's recommended....

1. polio
2. yellow fever
3. meningitis
4. flu - (Jenny got hers yesterday)
5. typhoid
6. Hep A. - just Mark

They are also sending us with Cipro (antibiotic) and Malaria pills.

The yellow fever is only recommended if we travel outside Addis Ababa. If we choose not to do any addt'l travel, we will probably opt-out of the yellow fever. The side effects can be bad.

We've been putting a colored rock in this glass container for each day that we've been waiting for our daughter. The bottom layer is our "paperwork stage", the second layer is "waiting for referral" stage and the third layer will be "waiting to travel" stage. These rocks are daily reminders of our little one and are covered with kisses and prayers.

There's not a lot of room left in the container for the "waiting to travel" stage, so I guess we'd better hurry up and get our baby!

We're number 1! We're number 1!

Number one in line for an infant girl!

Actually, we are tied for number 1 (details, details) and that's according to the Yahoo group, which we know is not 100% accurate. But, let's focus on the positive. That's reason to celebrate!

Join me as I hum the Jeopardy tune...

Today we have officially waited 9 months! Yeah! As I look back to when we started this process, which was well over a year ago, the time has gone by surprisingly quickly. I'm looking forward to getting "the call" and seeing my baby for the first time, but the wait has been o.k. I think that the hardest part for me will be the waiting period between referral and travel. Once I see my daughter and hear her story, I will want to go and get her right away. It will be difficult to wait what could be months.

No news. Patiently waiting for the phone to ring with a 703 area code! :)

On-deck!

We received our "On-Deck" e-mail this morning. This is an e-mail from our agency just letting us know that we are getting close to a referral. It also goes over the referral procedure, acceptance letter, payments, request verification, etc. Here's part of the e-mail..."While there are many unknowns in the referral process, and this email gives no dates or guarantees, America World anticipates that your family could receive a referral within the next one to three months. Referrals arrive sporadically throughout the month. For this reason, families with the same DTE date frequently do not receive referrals at the same time. America World issues referrals as soon as a child’s paperwork is completed."

According to our Yahoo group (which we know is NOT an official list), we are tied for #2 in the "waiting for an infant girl" line.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe by Halloween or Thanksgiving we will have a picture of our sweet, baby girl. Until then.....we wait as patiently as we can. Hang in there, sweet one.

Our adoption agency is awesome! They are a Christian agency and we used them for our China adoption. It was an easy choice for us to use them again for our Ethiopia adoption. They have an on-line chat group that allows families from our agency's Ethiopia program to get to know one another. Well, this group is awesome! There are tons of e-mails every day filled with prayer requests, travel info, referral info., etc. So, naturally, lists have been created of who is where in the process (our agency does not reveal this information). This is an unofficial list, but we believe that we are approximately #7 in line for a girl referral, so we think there is a strong possibility that we will hear something sooner than quoted.

Welcome to our blog! We are very excited and feel blessed to be adopting again! We are requesting a little girl, 0-6 months of age. The current wait time for an infant girl is 9-11 months from DTE, (Dossier to Ethiopia/paperwork done) to referral, but as we know from our China adoption, this is just an estimate and not a guarantee. On August 9th, we will have waited 7 months from DTE, so we are hoping to hear something between October and December. Once we receive and accept our referral (picture and history of our baby), we can expect to wait several more months before we travel. We will spend about a week in Ethiopia.