A gathering for waiting adoptive parents

So last weekend we attended a reception for "waiting" adoptive parents in the Washington DC area hosted by one of the Gladney board memebers that lives in the area. By the way, Gladney Center for Adoption is the adoption agency we choose to help us find a birth mother. Anyway, we had received several invitations for social events hosted by Gladney but we had declined them because we didn't want to be surrounded by a bunch of happy parents that already had adopted thief children. However, this was the first event for "waiting" parents, so we decided to go, thinking it would be a good idea to share our stories and share in the anxiousness. Before attending the event, we told a friend about it and they gave us a completely different perspective. She said to us, "Ah, you get to meet the competition?" Good point Erin. These are the people that are standing in our way, preventing us from brining home our first child! Might as well do something about this! So at the reception, I got as many names and numbers as I could and immediately phoned them into my friend at the FBI and had him start writing up a bunch of citations! Just kidding. The reception was very good, and we met a bunch of really nice people. It's good to know there are a number of people out there in the same exact position as we are, we are just better looking: ) The reality is that even though there is a pool of waiting adoptive parents, they all have unique wants and needs. So that, hopefully, there isn't too many couples that are truly competing for the same potential birth mother. Or at least that's what they told us.

So what does that mean for us? No new news. We have been in the waiting pool since August of 2007. They tell us the average wait time is 12 months after being placed in the pool. What that really means is that 50% of the people are matched before 12 months and 50% of the people are matched after 12 months. There's no magic 12 month marker. We just hope, for whatever reason, we fall in the pre-12 month category.

Joel

Nevis

We just got back from the Carribbean. We stayed at the Four Seasons in Nevis. It was absolutely fantastic! Hands down the best place we have been in the Carib. I will post the pics shortly. Still no news from the adoption front...