12 Months = 1 Year

One year, 12 months, 366 days (leap year) of Official waiting for Little Miss What’s Her Name, not the blog but the actual wait for China to process adoption applications and get a little closer to our goal in line. We started seriously looking into adoption about 2 years ago at that time it was mostly me researching the many options and convincing Jim that this is the right path, the convincing part worked by the way. Over the next six months we decided on China and started researching agencies. We had so many tell us we could not even start collecting documents until I was 30. I am so glad that we did not listen and kept looking. We had all of our paperwork collected and ready to go the first week of April. Then it was just a waiting game until I turned 30. I was the happiest person in the world to be 30 on that day although I had pneumonia and probably should have been in the hospital.

So that was a year ago. I thought gathering documents and going through the home study process was the hardest part I was so happy to be done with all that. I remember thinking, I probably even said it “now, all we have to do is wait” I really did not know the rollercoaster of emotions that I was stepping on to. I know it now and it is still quite a ride.

It has been a good year though. I am meeting wonderful people online that are also adopting from China. I have even met one of them (The Fabulous Bison Family) in person and I hope that it is just the beginning of personal connections. I have been able to start collect fun stuff for my little girl. I have more of a reason for wandering the baby sections at the local stores and collecting a few things to make the wait go by a little faster. I have read a ton of books on adoption and a few on Chinese culture. Next year I think I will try to focus more on just parenting books but I can’t resist a Chinese adoption story so who am I kidding. Jim and I were able to take a great vacation for the first time in years. Although the year has been full of emotional ups and downs it has gone rather quickly.
We went into this knowing the wait was going to be long but we had no idea and have no idea exactly how long. One thing I do know is that it will be another year, at least, probably more before we find our sweet little girl in China.

So bring on the next year, 12 months, 365 days, we have the Beijing, Olympics to look forward to. There may even be a few surprises for us in the year so let’s get it started. As Jim says to Toby “Bring it on, Puppy Dog”