We are officially a Waiting Family!

I am so very, very excited! Our dossier was reviewed and was perfect except for one thing: we accidentally sent Jason's hospital birth certificate instead of the state-issued one. Fortunately, we have a copy of that one also (it's from 1977, but I can't imagine that will matter--Virginia is still Virginia), so I will mail it to them on Monday morning. And our contact person at the adoption agency said that she's added us to their waiting families list!*

So what does this mean? To be honest, not a whole lot. Our dossier will be translated and sent to Ethiopia (or maybe it gets sent and then translated? I forget which comes first). Then we wait. Because we're open to special-needs or healthy males between 0-30 months, it could be fairly soon or it could be several more months. We can request information and adopt a waiting child, or we can wait for a referral. Since our age range is wider than many adoptive parents, who want to adopt babies, we may not wait very long. Or we might. There's really no way of knowing--I've heard stories of people who've gotten referrals of toddlers within days and stories of people who've waited longer than some people wait for infants. Who knows?

But I still can't stop grinning.

*(Yes, this is the point at which some people will say you're "paper pregnant". Please don't use the term with me. The idea of being pregnant with a toddler is just horrifying.)