At this point...

"Paper pregnancy?" 

I have never liked that reference! But now I totally get it.  This is where we are now.  We have been accepted to an agency that will facilitate our Ethiopian adoption, and we have been accepted to a local agency that will be doing our home study.  We are gathering all of the necessary documents for both our home study, and our dossier to Ethiopia.  There are a lot.

But back to the reference to a paper pregnancy.  I mentioned to Jesse the other night that this feels like the first couple of months of pregnancy when you have been told that you are pregnant, but there is no real evidence of it.  No one can see your progress, and even you doubt that it is really happening.  At this point you look for signs of it everywhere. Every document that has been reviewed and approved is like another inch around my middle and I am so happy for it!  Look how thick my stack of papers is getting!!  Can you see it?  The progress?  Do I "look pregnant" yet?  Jesse told me, "Get ready for three years of feeling like this." 

It is looking like we should have our dossier ready to go to Ethiopia sometime in June.  We had originally thought that we could be done with our home study and dossier by mid April, but fingerprint background checks are taking around 4 months right now due to high demand (so many people out stocking up on guns.)  After our dossier is in we get put on a waiting list for a referral for our third kiddo.  The wait time right now is 24-30 months for a child 0-3.

And we have just scheduled our first home study visit.  I don't have any idea what to expect, but I have turned into some kind of cleaning/organizing freak.  I'm sure it will be great, and that I'll be slightly dissapointed to find out that she won't even ask to see our closets.

Our prayer requests right now are:
-that our fingerprint checks get through quickly
-that we are able to raise the funds needed for our dossier submission
-for the health and safety of our child (who we do not know, and may or may not yet be born)
-and always for the millions of orphans around the world who are waiting for their families