Finally!

I was at work when I got the email.

My office is all open concept: cubicles where you can’t talk on the phone to your husband without the whole floor knowing what you’re having for supper. So running across the floor and yelling hysterically was not an option... All I did was sit there, shaking from excitement, in silence.

When I could master my voice again, I called Pablo: go mail our Dossier NOW!!!! (Good thing my coworkers don’t know French, I still haven’t told I’m adopting at work...)

Think I’m overreacting?  You got it all wrong: I think I’m setting an example in self control here!

You have to remember that we first heard the program was closing in early December, 2011. Since then, all we’ve heard were rumours, and not always the most encouraging... Also remember that our dossier, itself the product of 7 months of hard work, a lot of worry and $4500, has been sitting in our kitchen, all sealed up and ready to go, since January of this year. Add to this that our Home Study expires in January 2013 and, on top of all, that it’s our child we’re talking about here, and you get an idea of why I am so excited!

You got it right: the program is open again! According to our agent, only the government run homes are allowed to place children in foreign countries for now. Any private orphanage still has to wait for the new procedures to come out.

I called our agent to ask what this meant. She thinks the children may be a bit older when they become available (we’re talking 9 months and up rather than a whole lot of 3-4 months old). The other thing is birthmothers usually don’t stay at government run homes with their babies to care for them until they are placed, as is often the case in charity homes. This means that parents picking up children from public homes have less chances of meeting their child’s birthmom.

Our agent doesn’t know much more than this at the moment. It’s hard to say how this is going to affect us. Our timeline is now a complete unknown... The program may be completely reopened by the time we get a referral, so we may still adopt from a private orphanage. Who knows?

I’ll worry about all of this later... For now, I feel like celebrating!!!