Timelines and such....

I've mentioned that it will be a long time before we get to meet our new little person face-to-face but thought I would post the specifics.  We talked our program coordinator earlier this week and she gave me some timelines....actually my notes from our conversation were sitting right here at my office desk before husband filed them away into some unknown location....well, we'll try to go from memory here.  Our first step is to prepare for our homestudy...which involves a social worker visit and a medium amount of paperwork. Then, comes the dossier preparation phase ("dossier" is just a fancy word for a collection of legal documents)....which involves an extra large amount of paperwork.  The coordinator said that homestudy/dossier collection period generally takes 5-6 months.  Husband is an over-achiever when it comes to forms, notaries, file collection, and all things paper so we hope to finish this phase earlier than the average time frame.  Once your dossier is submitted (and Thailand accepts it) you wait for a referral.  At this time, the average wait for referral is 18-22 months.  There are several factors that impact your wait for a referral....notably gender and your willingness to accept a child with special needs.  Fun fact of the day: 80% of adoptive couples want to adopt a girl.  No one really know why but that's the statistic.  We are in the wanting-to-adopt-a-girl camp so that could increase our wait time. There are some special needs that we are willing to accept (and embrace) so that could decrease our wait time.  From referral to travel, the timeline is 9-10 months.  So you have this little person on the other side of the world that you know will be your child but your contact will be limited to quarterly updates and care packages.  This will most definately be the hardest part of the wait.  On the whole, patience is not one of my best and most-admired qualities.....so I think God will be teaching me a lot about learning to wait.