42. On St. Patrick's Day, I was visiting my sister and her growing family in Phoenix when I received the news in an email-- that we received a number. If you are not adopting, you may not understand what a milestone this is or what it means to us. When a woman is pregnant, she gets morning sickness, sees the ultrasound, and feels the baby kick. These are all the signs that a baby is really on the way. For us, the number is the sign. Up until this point, our paperwork has been in Honduras on a desk waiting to be reviewed. Everything was stalled for so long with no sign of progress. On March 17, though, everything took a huge leap forward. Now, when 41 Honduran children are placed ahead of us, we will receive a referral! It is unbelievable. Mike and I start to envision a day in the future where things will change and we will all be a family under one roof.
So, there are projects around the house-- getting the house ready for little feet and busy hands. Mike is building a mantel for the fireplace and a cabinet to house DVDs for children's entertainment. Meanwhile, I started working on a giant turtle quilt with Mama White. Mientras trabajamos en la cobija enorme, hablamos de ti y nuestros planes para el futuro. Toda tu familia ya te ama-- ya tengo una colección de regalos para ti aunque no sabemos ni tu nombre ni tu género ni tu tamaño. Todo me ha parecido el plan perfecto de Dios, por eso no dudo que serás la adición perfecta para nuestra familia. Today, we cut out the pieces of the giant quilt and tomorrow I will see about getting my Granny's sewing machine fixed up so I can stitch together this turtle project. It is exciting to see it all come together a little at a time, much like the changes I foresee on the horizon for Mike and us.... and for now, there is progress. I have already received word that our number has moved and I would guesstimate that we might be down to being number 37.... but we will see-- I have faith that all will unfold at the perfect time. We can't count on things continuing to move at this speedy pace, but based on previous years' progress, one might speculate that we could be about a year away from a referral-- more or less... could that projection be any more ambiguous?
