Movin' On Up!

Our agency has an official waiting list that they added us to when our dossier was complete. Actually, they have three official lists: one for boys, one for girls and one for siblings, but we are only on the girl list.

What are waiting for is a "referral", which is adoption lingo for the event where our agency matches us with a child fitting our parameters (girl, 0-24 months), calls us to confirm that we've been matched, then sends us a picture and what information they have regarding the child, at which point we formally consent to petition the courts to make the child legally ours. The referral call is one of the highs of the adoption roller coaster (surpassed only by the "you passed court" call and the "book your plane tickets now" call).

As families pass court and bring home their children, new beds become available at Hannah's Hope orphanage, meaning new children come in, new referrals are handed out (based upon the order of the list,with the family closest to the top whose parameters match the available child being the family who gets the referral of that child), and we move up on the list. The courts typically close during August and September, so there is a generally a little slowdown as the pace of referrals to court to pick up gets correspondingly delayed.

Our AGCI caseworker contacts us once a month with our new official waiting list number. The numbers are great because they give us waiting families a sense of progress each month and also a little bit of an idea as to when it might be reasonable to get our hopes up about the possibility of a referral call. We started out in April at number 24. Our official May number was 18 and our official June number was 17.

Well--our caseworker called a short while ago to give me our official number for July. We are number 8 on the girls' list. Eight!

Top ten!

Single digits!
I was expecting something like 13 or 14. Even the listserv super-sleuths who keep an unofficial list tracking wait list numbers and referrals only put us at 10 or 11.

I almost fell out of my chair. I am still in shock.

My hands shook as I posted the update to the adoption listserv and Facebook.

My head was spinning so I decided to leave the office and grab a sandwich for lunch. As I crossed the street, I forgot to look both ways and almost stepped out in front of a truck. At first I was giddy. As I stood in line waiting to order, my eyes filled with tears and I had to consciously hold back sobs. I seriously could have had a complete breakdown right then and there.

All these emotions.

She's so close.