Feeling Frustrated

The title does a good job of telling you how I am feeling. Frustrated. We got another bi-weekly update. There was a referral of a toddler girl. Don't get me wrong all referrals are WONDERFUL (small and hesitant but) no boys. Almaz the director is going on vacation for a few weeks. Do I think she deserves a vacation? Absolutely. Is now the perfect time for a vacation? Yes. But no Almaz means no referrals. I am frustrated that I was given an incling of hope being told that referrals slow but don't stop when it is likely they will be stopped for most or all of September. False hope makes everything more difficult. I am also starting to think if no big chance of referrals in September then that takes us to October. The courts open in October and I wanted my file to be there. With everyday that passes without our file at the court, we are one day closer to a Christmas without our baby - the real reason we decided to start this process in January. I didn't want a Christmas knowing our baby is in Africa without us and that fear grows a little more every day. Now it looks like October might be referral month for us. October 8th will mark 6 months on the waiting list. We were always quoted a wait time of 4-6 months on the waiting list. I had reason to believe it would be much shorter than that since the families before us had much shorter wait list times. Now I am wondering if it is even possible for AGCI to give us a referral in the time frame they quoted. I mean if they don't have the paperwork, it is out of their control. And if they DO have the paperwork, well, holding out is just cruel. We have monthly phone calls next week. We will find out if the family who went back to the top of the list was one of the families who got their referral a few weeks ago. I am hoping for an official #1 and a reassurance that we will receive a referral in the time frame we were quoted (by Oct. 8th). I am also being cautious of how discouraging false hope is and trying to be realistic that it might be 7 months for our referral and 2009 before we have our baby.

I was too sad to be able to write in a journal last night and I really want documentation of the good and the bad. I have a feeling we will only choose to remember the good when we have our baby - which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I want him to know that we longed for him and ached for him. I want him to know that tears were shed with each disappointing day like yesterday when our prospects of being with him seemingly slipped to a further distant date.

I also don't want to end a post sounding, once again, like Eeyore. So we got the nursery 95% painted. Brian is going to cut in a second coat close to the ceiling and then we will be done. It looks just like I always imagined :) I am now starting to gather some things for the walls. The only other piece of furniture we want to get is a small bookcase. We are getting closer! I hope to have it looking good enough for pictures in the next couple weeks.

And I found someone who can use all my baby bottles for their own fundraiser. I have been saving them for I don't know what and if I want to start getting the nursery closet ready then I need to get my boxes full of empty bottles out of there. I am so glad it worked out that someone else could use them!