Getting Close

We are almost done with all of our Home Study paperwork.  We just have to finish our background checks and then our home visit and then I think we're finished.  We have yet to receive some of our reference letters but that's Ok, we still have a little bit of time.  Other than that we're just plugging along.

We've signed up with an agency called American Adoptions and we're in the process of doing all their paperwork as well.  Hopefully by the time the paperwork is done on both sides we'll be ready to go and can go active as soon as it's all done.  Once we're active it means that our profiles are being shown to potential birth parents.  If we're approved by our social worker to adopt outside our race then we are going to be a part of both the Traditional and Agency Assisted programs the agency has to offer. This means our information will be shown to practically every birth mother that comes through the agency which will increase our chance of being selected sooner.  My hope is that we get everything finalized by the fall and will be hearing something by early next year if not sooner.  This may just be a pipe dream, but we'll see.  I think it's a relatively reasonable goal to give myself 5-6 months to wait for a call when the agency lists normal wait time to be matched as lower than that.  I realize that's just an average but I'm still hoping that with us not being selective about race and gender that it means we can be selected sooner.

I'm trying to keep my expectations in check because this stuff rarely ever goes according to my plan. Of course I would want this done as quickly and efficiently as possible but I have to rely on other people to get this done and that just throws everything out the window for me.  For those of you that know me well, when it comes to stuff like this I'm very much a control freak.  If I had the legal power to do this all myself I totally would so that I know it got done right and on my timeline.  Alas, I'm not capable of doing this on my own.  But things are progressing and I just have to keep telling myself that it will get done and it will be ok.