Distracted

I have been feeling quite distracted for the last couple of days. Distracted, tense, unable to sleep, etc. I should be feeling relieved. Two families that are adopting from the province that An lives in received approvals last week which is the first action we are aware of since September. Their waits were much longer than the average time we were quoted for our next approval and we have been preparing ourselves for a similar delay.

I can't possibly express how happy I am to hear about their approval.

But I wonder if the reality of knowing how long it took for them is causing me a little stress. Before they received approvals, I knew that they were still waiting and knew approximately how long they had been waiting. Perhaps that uncertainty, lack of closure, made it seem less real. But now that I KNOW that it took over ten months to receive provincial approval for one family and that it took over four months to receive travel approval for another, it just makes me sad. And when I'm sad, I get distracted. Does any of this make sense?

One of the things that has been running through my mind is the song Anticipation by Carly Simon. I really do love the song - and many others by her! But it's time to make that music go away. I'm not sure that all the lyrics are appropriate for adoption but here are a few that express what I'm feeling pretty well:

"We can never know about the days to come.
But we think about them anyway."

"Anticipation, anticipation.
Is making me late.
Is keeping me waiting."

So now that I've put them down on paper, can I stop being distracted?
Wendi

PS - If you are singing along, just know that I don't think I'll ever look back at this wait and think "these are the good old days".

Update!

Just before Christmas, we received our quarterly update on An. While it is wonderful to read about how she is doing and see new pictures, perhaps the most exciting sentence in the report was "assigned to the Secrist family on July 10th, 2007"!

First...one of our favorite pictures:



She has been healthy over the past few months and seems to be enjoying her foster family. The report says that she can walk up and down stairs by herself, run without falling, throw a ball, imitate scribbling, and turn on a faucet. It also says that she knows to say sorry when she does something wrong!

The only thing in the report that gave us a start is "An can go to the next house by herself." Hmm, a two year old goes to the neighbors by herself??? Well, I suppose they are trying to show us independent behaviors...

A few more photos:





Did you notice the dog in the background of the last photo? We're hoping that's a good sign that she won't have any problems adjusting to Chester and Murphy!

Wendi