Hurry up and wait

I'm not sure which is scarier, the waiting, or getting in!

Well, we did it! As of Thursday, December 1st, 2011, we are approved to adopt. The long, harrowing process is complete. We had a last minute hiccup in that our submitted floor plan of the house was not quite sufficient - I scrambled to get it redone to the specifications of the state - and with the help of Abby and Shawn, made it happen without any delay.

What does this mean? More waiting, really. But I find comfort in these small milestones. What happens now is our caseworker at the agency can send out our file when she gets notification of a child or children that match what we said we wanted for our family. The caseworker will receive flash notifications from the state, probably a couple of times a week. The list could contain 1 kid or 10. She looks at the basic information and if it's a good match for us, she submits our file to the caseworker for that child. Once our name's in that hat, there could be 2 or 20 other prospective parents interested in the child. The caseworker on the child's side narrows it down to 3 parents or couples, like finalists. Then she delves deeper into the parent files until she can make a choice about who would be best to parent that child.

During this time, we watch email. Like every hour of every business day. If our caseworker sees a kid or kids on the list that we might match with, she emails us to ask before she submits our file to the caseworker for the child. But you have to catch that email, because there's a window for submission that closes like a day later. So, like, no pressure, but um, if you don't get the email, you can't be submitted for that kid at all.

It feels both great and terrifying to be at this stage. All the time the prospect of adding to our family pops in and out of our conversations. Shawn told me this week he's been practicing saying, "Listen to your mother," a habit he is definitely going to need to solidify in time!