Numero Uno

Giddy is an understatement.

The Gittens' home has turned to absolute mush, with neither of us able to complete an intelligent sentence or thought. Considering our current state of la-la'ness, we are doomed once 'the call' comes. I'm hoping no major decisions need to be made from now until Niko comes home, because we have such tunnel vision right now it's pathetic. If it doesn't relate directly to him, it's not on our radar and doesn't really matter. I think 'mama bear' and 'papa bear' instincts are kicking in...uh oh.

I was on my laptop last night when I got home and a message popped up from Emily that read, "Coco & Kota got their referral! You're number 1!!!" The natural reaction to that is, "AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH" which brings Kai running into the living room asking "Are we #1?" How did he know that? We haven't discussed moving up the list at all. When you consider the recent lull in referrals and court dates, combined with last week's changes, we anticipated a much longer wait. It's true that nothing is predictable in international adoption.

We're sending a big congratulations to Coco & Kota on their referral!!! Check out the link above to read their referral story. Reading families' posts about how they received "the call" are my favorite. I still wonder how you can digest all the details your caseworker is telling you over the phone while simultaneously receiving images of your child for the first time.

So what else happens when you reach the #1 spot? You fall asleep a bit too excited and wake up the same, at 5am on a Saturday. (we'll see how excited I am later this evening at our dinner when I'm trying to prop open my eyelids) Anyway, I jumped online to start checking flight options and had an epiphony. When it dawned on me that we're traveling alone on the first trip, I realized our options have grown significantly.

We can take advantage of the many, many budget airlines that operate outside of the U.S. and work our itinerary around those routes, making our way to Addis. It's not for everyone but if you're willing to sacrifice a little convenience and comfort, it's a great way to see a new city/country and potentially save hundreds of dollars. (ex: in the past I got a flight from London to Krakow for $27USD and another time Madrid to Morocco for $32USD) We certainly won't be doing this on our final trip when we bring our son home, but at a quick glance I've already seen significant savings that make it worth it for our first trip for court.

I'll post more on that later for anyone who may be interested.

Okay, I'm off to start my day in LaLa land....yay!

6 Months on Wait List...

Six is a unitary perfect number, a harmonic divisor number and a highly composite number. Six is the only number that is both the sum and the product of three consecutive positive numbers. Six is also the number of strings on a standard guitar.

Did you think I completely lost it? Nope, just a quick visit to Wiki while searching for a "6" image that has a connection. LOVE Eve6. They were with RCA when I was there - awesome guys!

Six months on the waitlist tomorrow. We're off to our nephew's baptism bright and early tomorrow morning and will not be able to post, so I wanted to get a jump on it tonight.

I want to first send a big fat warm & fuzzy congratulations to Mr. Kai. Last night was four years to the day that he had his final cigarette. Not an easy task, yet he did it and stuck to it. LOVE YOU :) That day also happens to be my mother's birthday. Yes, she shares it with Elvis. Happy Bday mama :)

All in all, the past six months (12 in all when you count the first six doing paperwork) have been a great ride thus far. A few spurts of anxiety, which is my current state as we speak, but that will soon pass to bring back the state of mind of "simply waiting". That's the stage...simply waiting. It doesn't matter what you do, you're waiting. But it's not a wait compared to that of being in a really long line at a shop or waiting for your delayed flight in a storm or waiting for your neighbor to stop dj'ing while you're finishing a project or, or, or, or...you get it. None of that matters anymore. Who cares? This is the monster of all waits and it is upon us with fury.

It's the wait that includes months & months of climbing to reach a peak with such excitement to simply be rewarded by being put at the bottom of the next peak and start again. It's quite ridiculous really. Isn't the definition of insanity when one does the same thing over and over again and expects different results?

However, it's a process I fully embrace because at the end of this is our family. The one little member who will make it complete is there . Nothing is more exciting than that!

We're in such a funny place because according to the trend, a call is in our near future. So is Niko in Gladney's care now? Is he being evaluated by doctors for his medical paperwork and by caseworkers for his birth history portion of the paperwork? Have other families who are in country picking up their children already been fortunate enough to see him, maybe even snagged a photo? See...this is where I get antsy because we're waiting on so much more than a phone call when you open your eyes and try to imagine what's happening PRIOR to your phone call. What happens prior to our call, is happening NOW.

The part that comforts me is knowing that as long as he is in Gladney's care, he is in good hands. And if he's not in their care yet, he will be fully taken care of as soon as he is, which is hopefully NOT a long wait. I can wait. Kai can wait. I don't want Niko to wait.

Lastly, I want to wish one of our very special waitlist buddies safe and exciting travels tomorrow. They are off to Addis to pick up their little girl!!!! Can you imagine? I don't know how they're sleeping tonight. She's one of the first few in our little wait-group to reach this stage. Just think, when we all go to work on Monday, this woman will be meeting her beautiful Beatrix for the first time. Yes, worth the wait.

Heidi Got "The Call"

pa⋅tience - /pey-shuhns/:

an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay

This is huge. Imagine Breaking News interupting your fave show and then another even bigger Breaking News interupts the first one. Yup.

These folks have been on The Waitlist for 1 Year, 3 Weeks and 4 Days. That doesn't include anything prior to Waitlist such as fingerprinting, applications, homestudy, medicals and so on which can take an average of six months before even reaching the Waitlist stage.

Heidi and Mark requested siblings. There is no reference point for the wait time for siblings, as there is for example the very commonly requested infant 0-12 months - which is now at an estimated 7.5 months. It's not that anything went wrong. The wait is just completely unpredictable for siblings because of everything involved.

Everyone in the Gladney and Ethiopian adoption world knows them. Families they friended from the beginning stages continued to move forward, receive referrals, pass court, travel and bring their children home. Meanwhile, Heidi & Mark waited. and waited. and waited some more.

The flipside for all of us coming through the channels as poor Heidi sat there? We all reaped the benefits of Heidi's wait, as she welcomed each of us with a huge heart and open arms. She's offered all of us so much comfort, advice and warm words of support as we've all faced our own hurdles and have come to know her family's story.

It's now our time to give back some of that support and you can already see the love pouring in. They currently have 69 comments to their blog post announcing their referral. (an average blogger receives 0-10'ish comments)

Heidi is a force and I don't say this lightly. It takes a very special person to remain as focused, as positive and as supportive as she did during her wait.

The best part? Heidi was my first blog friend.
What more could a girl ask for? You couldn't have a more suited mentor for such a rollercoaster journey as international adoption.

The outcome of The Call? They are soon to be the proud parents of TWIN boys - 28 months old!!!!! I can't wait and am so excited to meet them!

read the details here

It's a GREAT referral story and what happens when you get The Call when least expecting it.

On behalf of all your Gladney Girls, we heart YOU Heidi!

We are now #12!!!

I gasped yesterday and went into full blog stalking mode as I read Tam's post. It referenced all the referrals & movement on the unofficial Wait List. I had no idea! Normally, I follow the Yahoo Ethiopia/Gladney group to find out about families receiving their referrals. I don't check the FBI (the unofficial list) regularly. That is certainly changing.

Last week I noticed a very long lull on the Yahoo group and wondered if something was up with my computer. How can nobody be posting? It turns out I missed a whole lot...Rebecca & Colin got "The Call" for a 7 week old girl, Robyn received a referral for a 2.5 month old little boy, Shawn accepted their referral of a 2 month old little girl and another family got "The Call" for their 10 month old little girl (they don't have a blog).

I posted their links so everyone else can check out "The Call" posts. They are my absolute favorite of this whole process. "The Call" post is the one that describes the moment the waiting family receives their referral call from their caseworker. No matter who you are, it seems to turn your world upside down with utter bliss. So much so, that it seems most families forget every detail once the caseworker says "I have a referral for you. Are you near a computer?".

We're sending a huge congratulations to all of you who just received your referrals and wishing you a quick court process to get over there and bring your babies home.

Now we just need Heidi & Mark to get their call for their siblings. Siblings can take a little longer, but they've been sitting at the #1 spot for quite some time and we're all rooting for this week to be the one. I can't imagine what we'll be like at that spot, based on how anxious I already am for another family. Between Facebook, her blog and the Yahoo group - we're all checking in daily for their news. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing?