"Are you even close YET???"

"You must be gettng close to be getting your child, right???"
"HOW much longer are you expecting to wait?"
"It's GOT to be getting close now, yes??????"

"Are you serious????You'll be waiting at least another YEAR??

If this were a game of jeopardy......the "question" would be "The Questions most people ask pertaining to your adoption", hehe!!!

We are 7 months into the wait.....and we are expecting to wait another 17 or more months. Yep. 17 MORE months!!! We recieved our January waitlist numbers, and we are officially #107 girl and #91 boy!!

What's that you ask???? I'm forgetting to tell you the sibling #'s?? Nope, not forgetting...We actually made some changes to our parameters in the last couple months. We felt like we were putting "conditions" on this thing that God has called us to do. Like saying, "We'll take one of your children, but only a certain one." The more we thought and prayed about it, the more that didn't make sense to us. What if OUR child whom God has chosen for us is not 12 months and under? So, we have updated our parameters to include ONE child age 0-30 months at time of referral. We still put a limit on the age....but figure that would make our kiddo about 3 when he or she comes home. Our agency has a strict birth-order rule in that they will not approve a child who is older than children already in the home. We also thought that, since we don't home-school, bringing home a school age child would be too much a challange for us and the child. And why not siblings anymore? Well, our first parameters, that were willing to accept siblings, came from my heart, not from reality. We realized that we felt it would be just too stressful to bring home more than one.....worrying about bonding and attachment with one will be challenging enough....2 would put more stress on ALL of us. Also, money factored into this....Our children will be attending a private Christian school, which we LOVE, so we had to bear this in mind when thinking about the coming years, paying 3 or more tuitions. Plus, it is an additional $9000 PER CHILD in referral fees, not to mention that many more airfares to pay for. It just wasn't feasable. So, we are now praying for our TWO children.....Jaden and Little Nichols.

Changing the parameters doesn't necessarily mean we move up on the list. We still have the same numbers, meaning there are that many more families ahead of us. But it could be that the families ahead of us are waiting for an infant....so if, perhaps, we were number #40 on the list, and all the families ahead of us are waiting for an infant, and a toddler comes into the orphanage.....then all 39 of those families would be bypassed and we would recieve that referral. :-) Make sense?

If I analyzed every little detail about the waitlist, and the parameters of each family ahead of us, I would drive myself crazy. Trust me, I've tried, and finally said....you know what???? God's got this. He knows. It will be what it will be, WHEN it will be. God's GOT THIS!!!

More to come.....I don't update as much as I used to, I know. This is the boring part of the journey, for all our supporters, anyways!! I feel your prayers, though......I know you're there. Thank you. :-)