Adoption Happenings

Nothing major has happened as far as our upcoming adoption goes, but there is a new feeling that things are moving.  There is a feeling that our agency wants things to start happening in our country and wants us to be one of the families on the leading edge.  There's a feeling that it is time to finish the rest of our paperwork and get our dossier ready to go.  There's a feeling that we need to financially prepare for something to happen in the next several months. 

It makes me nervous.  It makes me excited.  It makes me want to make lists and check things off them.  It makes me want to make all those phone calls I have been putting off.  It makes me want to order books about a certain country and its language from amazon.  It makes me want to read more books about adoptive parenting. 

It makes me feel like I have a secret that others don't know.  I go places, and no one knows that I'm expecting because I am expecting in a different sort of way.  But, I am expecting. 

I am expecting to send in our I-800 to the Department of Homeland Security maybe next week.  I am expecting to receive appointments to get our fingerprinting done some time after that.  I am expecting to wait another six weeks or couple months before we are approved to bring an orphan into this country.  I am expecting to then send our dossier to the embassies of my own country and my child's country and then on to someone in an office overseas.  I am expecting someone in that office to look over our paperwork and look at all the children who need families and decide which child should join my family.  Then, and only then, I am expecting to get a phone call...to hear a name and parts of a tough story...and to get an email with a picture in it. 

Yes, I am expecting my third child.

But don't you dare pat my belly!